On Public Speaking β˜‚οΈ #3

I’ve been having some fun weekends recently!

Two weekends ago, I went to Local Hack Day where I hacked a GIF-powered advent calendar together with my team and vlogged the whole thing. Last week, Matt, Darren and I went to Nottingham for GitHub Field Day, an unconference for student leaders in the tech community.


πŸ”‘ Keynote: Getting involved in the tech community

Amy Dickens, lead organiser of the event invited me to deliver a keynote on how I got involved in the tech community as someone from a Biomedical Sciences background. I took the opportunity to improve my public speaking ability, and despite being terrified, to begin with, it was such an enjoyable learning experience! Watching and listening to myself back again has given me areas I want to improve for next time. Big props to Matt for eagerly capturing my talk for reflection and development πŸ“Έ

I had fun sharing my story with someone who isn’t from a “techy” background and hopefully inspired others who lead their tech communities to encourage involvement in the community from different backgrounds. Diversity = ideas are varied, and everything is just much more interesting!

You can flick through my emoji-filled slides below:

Emojis help express things better – anyone else agree? πŸ™‹πŸ»β€β™€οΈ


πŸ—£ The day’s discussions

The discussions and talks throughout the day were put forward and decided by the audience.

Field Day discussions
Field Day discussions with 2:30 – 5:00 led by the Sheffield squad!

As you can see, the topics of discussion were varied and different! I learned a lot about the importance of SWAG for events (the free stuff!) and design all the way to the non-coding uses of GitHub (which Matt wrote an informative blog post on – if you’re interested, you can read it here) and Data Bias.

Feeling much more confident, I decided to do a back-to-back talk and discussion session on self-care and building up hype on social media in the context of event organising.

Although I didn’t have much time to prepare the talks (I created the slides in about half an hour during lunch), I felt positive that I knew a lot on each of the topics! There were these “How to Lead a Discussion” information sheets around which helped too!

How to Lead a Discussion
How to Lead a Discussion

I’m planning to write a more detailed version of each of the short talk I did on the blog soon, but for now, you can watch each of them below:

πŸ§˜πŸ»β€β™€οΈ Importance of self-care

πŸ“± Building up hype on social media


Concluding the day

Not only did we get fed incredible food but we also had this amazing, relaxing venue 😍

Overall, the day was really informative and fun! I love the environment this tech community has – it’s always super supportive and welcoming to all. I never felt judged or scared of what people might think when I was giving the talks! Surrounding yourselves in a positive environment like this is so important for opportunities, development (like public speaking for example) and the amazing friendships you get out of them. πŸ’–

Thank you for organising Amy!
Thank you for organising Amy!

10 responses to “On Public Speaking β˜‚οΈ #3”

  1. Glad to hear the talk went well, Pauline! And it’s great that Matt filmed it for you. Hopefully it will help you hone your public speaking skills, even though you’re already fantastic at it in my opinion!

    It must be so lovely to be part of such a supportive community. I’m glad you feel comfortable around all those people, and it must be such a great environment for learning from others and developing your skills. It makes me wish I’d been more involved in activities at uni!

    Glad you enjoyed it!

    1. I can always trust Matt to help me document my whole life haha! Thanks so much for your kind comment 😊

  2. Girl, you never cease to blow me away with how much you take on and the way you’re putting yourself out there these days! It’s amazing! Being in a positive environment like that is SO empowering and energizing and I’m stoked that you’ve gotten to experience that. Keep kicking ass and taking names! You’re inspiring me to jump more into tech!

    Susie | http://milehighdreamers.com

    1. There’s always room for you in tech! Thanks so much Susie!

  3. That’s really cool that you got to speak at an event like that. It looks like you did a great job! I would have been terrified. I hate public speaking.

    1. Thanks! I used to be terrified but it gets better with practice. 😊

  4. It’s cool that you were involved with giving a presentation at the unconference. I like how you insert all of the emojis in your slides! Haha, I’m barely getting by with inserting some flat png’s for presentations I use at work. It’s great that there were different types of discussions. I am in love with the interior decor there!

    1. Emojis all the way πŸ˜‰

  5. It’s really awesome that you’ve been lots of public speaking gigs – it still feels like yesterday when you said that you’re super nervous about public speaking and that you don’t really like doing it, but look at you now! You’ve come a long way! πŸ˜€ While watching you, I can’t help but feel proud of you because you’re getting really good at this. Guuuurl you’re slayin’! <3 I'm sure the positive feelings from the supportive community around you helped a lot too! πŸ™‚

    1. Thank you so much Claudine! 😭 I still can’t believe that I’ve done so many now, it’s always scary but once you get the hang of it, it’s a lot of fun!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.