1st Time Speaker – It was meh.

Well after months of thinking about it, I was given a chance to present at my first user group meeting here in Oklahoma City.  The OKC SQL User Group allowed me to present on the topic of Dynamic Data Masking in a live application which was Dynamics GP 2016.  I should note that I’m not really an introvert, but I”m not exactly the speaking type of person.  I was not sure what to expect, but none the less I made it.  If I had to rate myself on how I did I’d say 5/10 which is why I say that it was meh in my book.  The people in attendance were amazingly supportive, and very helpful with feed back.  I am taking my talk and going back to the drawing board using my new found knowledge to make the presentation far  better.  Below are just some of the things I learned from my experience.

1. Relax – I was far too worked up going into the talk.  I learned that if I calm down I will be in a much better position to deal with any obstacles that may come up. Like making sure I have the appropriate adapters for my laptop.
2. Plan – Create a written plan and stick to it.  I was all over the place in my talk so the content delivery was not the best it could have been. Next time I’ll have a written abstract to act as my path to travel down.
3. Leave It – The day of the talk I reworked all of my demo code, and that led to some really embarrassing mistakes when executing my demos.  Had I stuck with my original code which was vetted and tested 100% several times, then my execution would have been flawless.

So in closing I learned a lot and if given the opportunity to present again, that I’d do it in a heart beat and this time be far more organized with my talk.