On March 14, 2023, I found myself giving my first public conference talk ever. At my first-ever Python conference! This post is to mark the event and to reflect on how quickly things fell into place.
Seamless experience
After hearing about Reshma Saujani’s ‘brave girls’ mindset twice in one day the week before, I began to wonder if it was a sign that I needed to act on. Twice is enough to catch someone’s attention, isn’t it? At the start of the #PWC2023, I received another hint. During the opening remarks, Calvin Hendryx-Parker invited attendees to sign up for Lightning Talks - 5-minute talks aimed at inspiring thoughts and igniting future collaborations.
It wasn’t until the first end-of-day social that I mustered the courage to sign up: after hearing from several first-time speakers who had either just delivered their talk, or were scheduled to deliver one, or were shortly after, I couldn’t resist and blurted out, “I want to give it a shot too!” Little did I know that I would be scheduled to speak in just 18 hours.
Behind the scences
In the morning, I managed to put together several slides to create a storyline, but I had no time for editing or practice[! practice! practice!]. And there I was, delivering my first talk on the struggles of the chemical industry to monitor precise carbon footprint of their products. It wasn’t a perfect talk (of course, I did fix the slides afterwards 😅), but it turned out to be a perfect fit with Hillary Lovric ‘s talk on the value of individual contribution into augmenting the existing corporate data and, thus, closing the gaps to enable accurate tracking of the emissions and Alex Smolyak’s phenomenal deep dive into wastewater intelligence.
I am immensely grateful to Calvin Hendryx-Parker, Darcy Lee, Laura Stephens, Chris May, James Spadafora, Mario Munoz for the inspiration and support! 🙌
Copyright © 2023 Zheniya Mogilevski