I have recently had the opportunity of being speaker in SQL Saturday Cork event, in fact, it was my first experience in any SQL Saturday conference, however, the friendly attitude and well-organized conditions of this event let me to feeling comfortable since the beginning (thanks @Mark Hayes).
I have to accept that I took a risky option when I submitted my session, I knew that in the DB world, some topics as GIT are not so much popular, but from my experience, these sort of sessions can contribute to filling a real gap in the DB professional world. Nobody told me that it should be easy, but it was no impossible, I remember having a long conversation with my wife to reach an agreement about how to distribute the time for preparing this session and incoming sessions that I was sure will be coming (love you @Lauren).
When you decide to go outside of your comfort zone, it can be risky, but it doesn’t mean that not be profitable, at least it was very productive to me in terms of learning and I went in deep with some subjects, in my life a true premise says: “the best way of learning is teaching” .
Sometimes, the doubts come to my mind, especially when I decided to become in speaker. The majority of my doubts were coming from the fact that English is not my mother tongue, however, I had the opportunity to read some books about presentation skills and they had a complete section to address effectively with this obstacle, and it is interesting to discover that you are not alone, there are many professionals in the outside world who has a sincere desire to participate in IT communities and conferences and due to lack of confidence with their English level they stop themselves.
At this stage of my life and some experience behind my back, the best advice that I can give you is: “never give up”, it might sound trivial or boring, but it is true, might be you commit a lot of mistakes, and it doesn’t matter if you can deliver your message to your audience, it not necessarily means that you are not going to improve your language skills, my point is that never you must allow your weaknesses to destroy your self-confidence.
In this moment of my professional career, I feel that I have accumulated experiences and enough interaction with the real world, and mainly I have a clear message to deliver through different events, meetups and conferences, leaving back the fear and the shy and encourage myself to give a forward step.
Finally, I want to mention two key moments that were fundamental to face the natural fears, the first, during a training where my colleague @Claudiu, told me a phrase that allowed me to react, he said: “Geo, It would be better if you present this training in Spanish because you do it with more passion when you speak your mother tongue”, that phrase stayed in my head for days, I realized I lost passion when I did my presentations for being careful with my English, I should not continue keeping this attitude, never the fear has to be more powerful than passion and compromise, thanks my friend for your unexpected words.
Here, a link that was very inspirational to me, is the Leonard Cohen’s Prince Of Asturias Speech, after to hear him, I started to look for my own voice and the road to becoming a speaker was the perfect path to seek it.
Leonard Cohen’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIR5ps8usuo
Well, I am waiting for my next adventure and I keep in the deep part of my soul the hopes of continuing revealing my voice and delivering my message through the IT and remind myself that the most important act of rebellion that we could do is simply: “Never give up”.
PS: My infinite grate toward my father Yahveh who open the door for walking in his blessed name.