Hello!

[Sarah.Eaton]

Hi my name is Sarah I am in the UK and recently started as Deployment and Automation specialist, having been a System Quality analyst prior to that. 

I have done plenty of public speaking in the past, even being livestreamed by Google from the Royal Institution in London. I have done several presentations at work in front of a room packed full of people.

Something has happened and I put a lot of it down to lockdowns and such, being stuck at a desk at home, but I feel less confident.

I know that doing a new role which is a new direction for our company I am going to have to do presentations (already have but over teams) and there just have not been the face to face opportunities. The last face to face presentation I did was in the PechaKucha style and it went down really well. That is 20 slides 20 seconds each little or no text and DEFINITELY no graphs and pie charts :D 

Any hints for rebuilding that confidence would be welcome!

[Patrícia Fortunato Montenegro]

Hello

@Sarah.Eaton 

I understand what you feel. But maybe it's time to breathe a little more and relax your mind in a way that you will be able to encounter yourself. Sometimes, we feel so surrounded by milestones of goals and activities that we forget for a quick moment ourselves and how is important to keep everything in balance. So, smile, live, work, relax and repeat.
But all the answers are inner inside ourselves. We need to interact with co-workers, talk to each other, and relax with might be changed. A lot has been changed for all of us 😊.
You're capable; you can do it. Just remember that is already part of your job, and it's just a task, not a "big deal."

I hope it helps...I do it every day!

Have an amazing year ahead.

Cheers,

😃

[Patrícia Fortunato Montenegro]

@Sarah.Eaton and BTW, congrats for the PechaKucha. It's hard! But you did it! 😃🥳✨🚀👏🏽

[Dave Liao]

Good call on mentioning PechaKucha - that's one of the best ways to practice giving talks (I feel) because of its natural constraints.

Haikus for speeches, I'm in. 🙂

[Sarah.Eaton]

Yes I find with PechaKucha people actually LISTEN because you aren't talking and hurriedly trying to explain some incomprehensible graphic to them at the same time. A little aside to this I wish that if people have really meaningful statistics/graphs/pie charts for instance, they should share them before a presentation. But the majority of the time who remembers a pie chart!

[Fun Man Andy]

@Sarah.Eaton sounds like it's been REAL tough, but to have the bravery to talk about it on Community, and also talk in such a positive manner shows you are a survivor and have gotten through this stronger than ever! 😊💪

My biggest hint for rebuilding your confidence would be to come and do one of your talks during a Virutal ACE over at Rotterdam. We would love to have you and welcome you with big open arms! 🤗👐

ace.atlassian.com/rotterdam
(scroll all the way down and hit the query button to contact us!)

[Sharon Tan]

Nice to meet you, @Sarah.Eaton! I can definitely relate and also feel a bit out of practice when it comes to speaking in public or even just being in the spotlight. Something that comes to mind for me is practice!

I've been getting a lot of energy from being around people again and also getting into the mindset of preparing something, delivering it, and experimenting with ways to make it better. I also try to keep an eye out for presenters that I think do a great job and try to emulate them. I'll be thinking of ways to keep that fresh this next season (in light of less social interactions with lockdown)!