I was asked to write a few words about my Euruko presentation (Vimeo video here). It was an amazing experience so I thought it would be a great opportunity to share it.
If you’re interested, you can find the code for the presentation here and some more resources here.
The birth of an idea
I came up with the idea for the presentation when we were working on a Todo app at Applicake, however I wanted to sync it with the Things GTD app. I ended up writing a ruby gem which solved my problem. You can find it at my github account. After doing that I heard that there was a call for speakers for Euruko and thought that this might be good material for a talk.
I sent my proposal for a 20-minute talk and was very excited when I received and email saying I was accepted. Of course my excitement lasted around 4 seconds when I realized I will be speaking in front of a whole auditorium. I’m used to giving talks to Applicakers during Railstalks, but this was waaay bigger. So, I did what most people do in a situation like this – I panicked.
Well, to be precise, I took my time. I started panicking around 1 month before the conference. I prepared a first draft of the speech and delivered it to Applicakers. I can’t thank then enough for bashing that first draft with criticism. It was bad, I can safely say that now. But it took me back to the drawing board and I started improving what I had, so when I delivered it again to Applicakers, they liked it much more.
5 minutes to midnight
When I was done, Euruko was set to start. I was to speak right after the lunch break – I loved the time slot because I could set myself up earlier and try the presentation. That was the best idea ever – 30 minutes before the talk I tested it out on the projectors and it turned out that code examples are unreadable! With support of the few people in the room I managed to fix that right before the start time.
I was a bit shook up by the last second changes, but there was no time to think about it – it was time to start! So there I was, in front of almost 300 people looking at me. Absolutely terrifying moment. However, once I started talking, the nervousness faded. There was one moment when I tried to throw in a joke and nobody laughed, but I managed to recover by keeping my cool and moving on.
After it was over and I answered some questions (I’d like to thank for some great suggestions that came from the audience), I sat down and only then I started to relax. An awesome party the same night also helped 
After thoughts
It was my first time speaking at a conference and I’m still reflecting on the experience. I have to say it was stressful and I’m still finding out what I could have done better but it was very rewarding. I highly recommend anyone taking up such challenge – you’ll love it. And once you do it, you’ll want to do it again. I know I do.
Tags: EuRuKo, EuRuko2010, Ruby on Rails developers, Team members
