How I started speaking publicly (LifeStory Category)

Yesterday I was at an IT apartment from our devrel, which they held for people who do a lot for the company's tech brand. The event was warm and lamp-like - I talked with old acquaintances and applauded colleagues who won in different nominations and went home. But as I was driving, I decided to remember how I overcame the fear of performing and first stepped onto the stage of the big conference, which turned out to be Teamlead Conf.

This is what spring events brought about. 2018 The year I decided in March with my friends to go to Sorochany to snowboard. It seems that it was supposed to be an ordinary trip, because I started to skate nine years before, a couple of times went to the Alps, quite a lot of riding in the suburbs. But then everything went wrong - after me in the morning, as we agreed, friends stopped and we went to the gurney. I slept a couple of hours that night, but I thought it was enough. Shortly before that I bought a hard and fast board and really wanted to run it.

Next, I remember waking up in the passenger seat of the car, I had a headache, chest, leg ... I turned to my friend who was driving and asked, "Where are we and what is going on?" He looked at me and, as if reluctantly, began to tell me that we went to the slope, came and started to skate, it took about an hour, and then one of them saw someone like me being taken away on a snowball towards the infirmary. Then they came and saw me help. At some point, I woke up and then I started asking questions like, "Where are we and what's going on?" and they answered me. 30 Then I reboot them and then I reboot them. My friends decide to take me to Moscow to call an ambulance for me and put me in a Moscow hospital. The medical staff advises me on the way to communicate with me and answer repeated questions, expecting that through N iterations, the reboots will cease to occur and the memory will grasp.

In fact, at some point it happened, somewhere halfway along the way to Moscow. Then we drove to our office on Vodnoye, to which we called an ambulance. Then I was taken away and treated for about a week for a brain injury.

I learned some important lessons from this incident.

1. Do not be in a bad shape to engage in extreme sports
2. Even if you're a pro at something, safety is everything. (The helmet is always with me now.)
3. It’s hard to feel like the main character in a novel.Flowers for Algernon" ("Flowers for Algernon")
4. After a month, when the main post-effects were only glasses, I decided that I need to start sharing more of my experience with others – to have material confirmation for potential grandchildren that their grandfather before he fell into senility, was quite well versed :)

autumn 2018 I already spoke at the St. Petersburg Teamlead Conf, where I talked about how we built development processes in our frontline teams. If you find a recording of this performance, you can see that I am very worried and have a difficult time performing in public. But since then, a lot of water has leaked, so now public speaking in Russian is easy for me. At the end 2019 I was planning a year. 2020 One year to go to Western conferences and go to speak... but it didn’t work out. But out of these public appearances, my bloat grew. TellMeAbout.Tech, as well as this tg channel.

P.S. As my best friend once told me, “In all situations, try to see the best, not focus on the problems.” I seem to have heeded the advice and now think of that fall, not as the cause of a serious injury, but as the trigger of a series of events that led me to meet my future wife. We met her and started talking at the first ArchDays conference, which I opened in the main hall, and she was the host of the second room:)

#Storytelling #PublicSpeaking #Leadership #SelfDevelopment