I’ve Just Had The Best Talk Of My Career……. And It Was A Disaster!

I’ve just had the absolute pleasure of speaking at Cyber Science 2018 at the Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow.

It was my first talk in a year and one I was hugely looking forward to, given it was in Scotland’s second best city (!!!) and I was alongside some incredibly talented fellow speakers and attendees.

I’ve been speaking publicly for three or four years and I tend to focus my content on work I have been involved in where I have failed or learned a huge amount from. Often to help share my ‘lessons learned’. However, for this and future events in 2018, I wanted to broach the subject of Imposter Syndrome in Cyber Security; what is it, why is it so prevalent in our industry, is it even a bad thing and what can we do about it. It’s a rather personal subject and when researching other talks at events around the globe, felt it wasn’t being discussed.

In the lead up to the event, I spent considerable time on the content. I always do, but more so this time given the change of direction and that it’s a work in progress of a talk I want to continue to give. I’ve been taking advice from the likes of Troy Hunt around how to structure talks and time yourself to stay on track. I even recorded the presentation on my phone to listen back to. I understood today wasn’t going to be perfect, but an opportunity to test the material to a great industry audience.

I am always nervous just before talking and today started very well. My first few slides on my background and my level of Imposter Syndrome went perfectly fine. I looked around a room of 50-60 people and everyone seemed engaged. I felt I was ‘back in the game’.

However, within a slide or two, it was apparent I was working from the wrong slide deck. An earlier version which was note-led and not the finished article. I desperately tried to carry on, but it absolutely threw me off my stride and while trying to talk about my subject, my mind was wondering how I had managed to cock that up so spectacularly! Had I sent the wrong version? Had the organisers accidentally put the wrong version up? Had something weird happened to my emails?

I was rattled. I tried to muddle on through but the slides made no sense to me now. Initially the people in the room won’t have known what was happening, they will just have seen a bloke talking about Imposter Syndrome losing his composure, unravelling and becoming a train wreck within the space of two minutes!

I spent what felt like a lifetime grabbing my laptop from the back of the room and trying to sort the connectors to the big screen (with huge thanks to the awesome organisers and tech team who sorted it so quickly!). I could hear a pin drop while all this was happening.

There’s a certain irony of this picture below, which is me frantically trying to connect my laptop in front of one of my memes, which is Homer Simpson saying “Where’s The Any Key”!!!

(pic credit to @SeniorFrosk on Twitter)

I remember my face going rather red with embarrassment as I got back to the correct slide and restarted the conversation.

I eventually composed myself and finished off the talk, with a notable sense of relief. I won’t sugar-coat that short experience; I absolutely wanted the ground to swallow me up at that point!

The absolute irony of me speaking about Imposter Syndrome, my own discomfort of speaking publicly yet wanting so badly to do it, and then making a rookie mistake which led to a disaster of a section of it, is not lost on me!

However, it has almost certainly very quickly become the best talk of my career! 

I’ve found I can screw up, adapt quickly (although with some notable embarrassment) and then fundamentally not care that some of it went wrong (which is one of my coping mechanisms for Imposter Syndrome!). It’s reaffirmed my belief that public speaking can often be difficult and anyone who is able and willing to do it deserves our respect and attention.

I had more people ask me questions at the end than perhaps any talk I have done. I’ve left with a greater sense of satisfaction than any talk I have delivered and I have learnt valuable lessons about my preparation for such events. I’ve also continued to learn that you can laugh at yourself (one of my slides today actually said “I don’t take myself too seriously!”).

So there you go, even when things go wrong, they can be awesome experiences that give you stories to tell and lessons to learn!

Thanks to Cyril and everyone who made the event happen for having me!