Right before the release of something big that you really care about (in my world, typically a software product), you would think that you'd be really nervous about it. Turns out the opposite is true.
After months and months of prep for this TEDx talk, I'm really just plain ready and excited for it. I've iterated and iterated on ideas, had several horrible ones and crumpled them up, had a few mediocre ones and crumpled them up too, and then after hours and hours and hours and hours, finally settled on something I am really happy with.
Don't get me wrong - the journey has been super fun too, it's like planning a world trip. You spend days and weeks and months planning and thinking and anticipating. But in the couple weeks before you go, you've prepared so much mentally and emotionally for the trip that all you need to do is pack your bags, jump on the plane, and have the time of your life.
I'm very much in that state right now. It's been a lot of hard work to prepare this, and I've changed and modified and completely remodeled the speech several times over. But the last few weeks have just been practice and minor tweaks. I am now just preparing the cadence of the speech and getting very comfortable with the flow of the slides and with the timing of each section. It's all about the presentation now - the content is locked down and I'm going to submit the slides in the next couple of days. The only thing left to do is the presentation itself. And as I mentioned in the previous post about this, that's the easy and (really) fun part!!! Going back to the travel analogy, preparing like craaazyyyy for my Japan trip was a lot of hard work over months and months. But actually jumping on the plane and GOING to Japan?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!! That wasn't stressful at all. That was the fun part. The hard work (stress, if you want to call it that), is all done at that point. At this point, it's all about straight implementation.
On that note, I'd like to announce the name I've (finally) settled on for the speech.
Mike Jutan: "!!! (and why it's so important)"
If you already know me in person, you already know what I mean by "!!!". If you don't, I hope you understand it after my speech. Tune in live (and free) at http://tedxibyork.com on Friday Nov 18th. I'll be speaking sometime in the afternoon, eastern standard time (Toronto time zone). If you can't make it online to catch the speech, don't worry. Sometime following the speech, a version will be posted online on YouTube to watch at your convenience. Thanks to everyone who has helped me prepare and offered advice, wisdom and direction. I hope you enjoy it.
Mike :)
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