- Good morning everyone. (car honks)
Welcome to our new Vlog.
The cars on the street welcome you too.
It's Monday, it is a new week,
I'm afraid I don't have a planned update for you today
because I didn't go to a pawn shop on the weekend
and buying new pants.
I spent my weekend watching Formula One
and working on my presentation for Figments conference,
it's coming up on Thursday.
By the time you see this Vlog,
it would've already happened, like last week potentially,
if I'm remembering... (car honks)
My upload schedule correctly.
But yeah, and that's what I spent the weekend working on.
I've just been going through it this morning too,
and refining a little more.
Here's a little sneak peek of my slides
and the style that I like to do them in,
I just like to mix this block text which is a averta,
my favorite font, with handwritten stuff
and yeah I think it's working out well.
I think I mentioned in the Vlog
where I told you I'm gonna be speaking at config,
that this talk is one I've given before,
first it was a workshop
and that it had an epic occurrence a couple of years ago.
There never been as a talk, several meetups since then,
but this is the first time doing it properly
at like a big conference,
as a talk rather than a workshop.
So I spent a lot of time over the weekend going through,
refining it a lot,
just making sure it's really tight and succinct
and I'm gonna close my door because that is annoying.
I feel like it's in a really good place now.
And there was definitely like,
just a lot of improvements I needed to make,
to make points land better, to better structure information,
so I did give it quite the overhaul
and I'm really looking forward to presenting it.
I think it's gonna be good.
Kind of unsure how it's gonna go presenting virtually,
'cause I'm gonna be standing like right here,
to present my conference talk.
And it's just not gonna be the same as being on a stage,
and having real time feedback from the audience,
when I make a joke or attempt to make a joke,
things like that.
But I think it's gonna be good,
because it requires no trouble,
and after I finish my talk, I can go straight back to work,
so I don't really need to take time off,
to speak at this conference, which is very nice.
One thing I'm a little nervous about,
is I have to present through Google Slides
and I'm very used to Keynote.
What I've done is export all of my Keynote slides as images.
So and just added an image here into Google Slides
and I need to go through now
and copy through all of my speaking notes, in as well.
And then later on today, I think it's at like 1 o'clock,
I have a dry run practice with someone
from Figma on the technology
that they are presenting the conference on,
so that I can feel comfortable with it.
So yeah, hopefully that will help,
and I'll be feeling fine after that.
I'm wondering like, should I use my clicker?
I had a little clicker
that I've used at conferences in the past,
It's been a while since I talked at a conference,
so I'm not sure where it is,
but that could be nice,
like I wanted to feel as much
like I'm presenting to them as possible
and not like I'm like sort of sitting here on my computer
and reading from a screen.
Anyway it's taken me longer than I expected this morning,
to do like another pass through at my slides.
to check that I'm happy with everything.
I did a practice, like speaking it out loud as well,
just to myself in this room
and you get the speaker notes in
and then I need to do a workout to start my day.
I'm already feeling like it's too late,
it's nearly 10 o'clock and I haven't like started work yet,
so do I have time for a workout?
But I know on days that I don't take the time
to do a workout,
they always end up just as a shit day to be honest.
So I know it's gonna be worth it,
if I take the time to do that.
So let's get a hustle on and put these speaker notes in.
(upbeat music)
Okay, cool I feel like this Google Slides thing,
is gonna be okay.
Check out this what's happening down here.
I popped out the notes
and it pops out as a separate window here,
so I think that when I share my screen,
I can just share this one
and then I'll be able to see my notes perfectly fine
and yeah, you can be in here and use the arrow keys
and it moves along the next one.
And it is really cool that...
And this is why they asked us to use Google Slides,
is because it has captions here.
And so that makes my talk more accessible.
Wow, I cannot believe how accurate this is,
well, not just then, but in general,
it's been very accurate and understanding my accent,
so that's really cool.
Okay, well now that I complemented it,
it's doing terribly,
who the... (beeps)
Is Sandy Maxx.
(upbeat music)
Cool so I just had my little rehearsal thing, they've got...
Yeah, a really good system set up for a virtual conference,
so I think it's gonna go well
and it was good to have the time to practice.
I think this is where it feels very different,
to just being a guest on a webinar.
They're treating it
as they would a real live conference event,
where you would have like a time to practice your talk.
Actually, you know what?
Not every conference does that, but I'm realizing now,
that the conferences that I felt I've done best at,
I've had a time to like practice on the stage
with the text that up.
Now I think I'm gonna eat lunch,
'cause it is nearly 2 o'clock,
but I didn't eat breakfast today,
and so I'm gonna eat lunch
and then get back into doing stuff for the day.
Some non-figment talk related things.
I started coding a page this morning, this page here,
for our pro-plan that we're launching.
We had this page here,
this is just a page in WordPress,
it's not custom coded,
it's just in...
Set up in WordPress,
so it's not great as a page.
It's all in one column and looking super marketingy,
or very convincing and all of that.
And so I started being like,
"How quick could I just code a page instead."
As like one of our real future pages.
So I feel like this is gonna work,
I need to export the images
and do some like alternating side stuff, with these points,
so it's not just like images in a row.
I will tune back in after lunch and show you how I've gone.
(upbeat music)
I'm really proud of myself everybody.
I managed to code at this page here,
let me just give you a quick scroll down it,
in about two hours,
that included having put together a couple of images,
they're very basic this one and this one and this one,
but this I think is so much better
than the last page was that I showed you.
I have now submitted a pull request,
so that Corey can check it over
and make sure that there wasn't anything
I like, I don't know overlooked,
but I think it's gonna be good.
Like, I think this is gonna be way better than,
what we had before.
It's not my finest work,
it's a pretty boring page, but you know what?
It's gonna be fine.
And that's just the kind of thing we have to do sometimes.
And I'm just pleased,
that I managed to get this done in two hours.
Sometimes I get in these moods,
where I'm working when I get into like a super flow state,
because I am listening to a song
that I'm really enjoying, on repeat
and I mean like literally on repeat,
let me show you my like listening history,
for the past hour or so.
It's just been this same one song,
by All Time Low, for a while,
but it's been helping me focus,
so that's great.
Tell me if that's something you do too,
when you work, do you listen to music at all, first off?
And then if you do, are you like, listen to albums person?
Are you a playlist person?
Or are you like me?
Where every now and then you just find us the one song
and you listen to it on repeat,
until you're freaking sick of it,
because that's what I tend to do.
I listen to songs on repeat
and then I listen to my Spotify on repeat playlist,
which like, automatically gathers together,
all the songs you've repeated.
I would bet that this song,
is gonna be near the top of it now, after today.
Good morning everybody.
What the (beeps)
is my hair doing today?
Today is Thursday,
I thought that'd be fun in this Vlog,
to show you the day that I do my talk and yeah,
be able to tell you how all that goes,
in case that is interesting to you.
I think on Monday I was saying that I did a lot of,
revising of my talk and everything like that.
And I've kept revising this week,
I've been practicing daily at it.
I'm feeling confident about it,
feeling like I've got it down to the right length.
When I practiced this morning, it was about 21 minutes
and they've asked me to keep it to 25,
and so that's good.
I can probably like,
breathe a little bit more throughout,
as I'm going through it, but yeah.
I'm gonna do one more practice perhaps soon-ish.
I don't normally like to practice too close to the day,
but because I feel like I left the practicing
and I'm too kind of late.
I feel a lot of responsibility,
when speaking at a conference,
that people are there and they've like,
in this case, it's a free conference,
they haven't like paid money to be there,
but they're still paying with their time, right?
I wanna make sure I'm giving them
the best quality version of a talk, that I can.
I've been to too many conferences myself,
where the talk has been kind of shit.
(laughs)
And I don't know,
the speaker just didn't put enough thought into teaching
and it was all just them like, "Oh, I'm on stage,
I'm just gonna like show you my portfolio
and talk through it."
I just don't think those kinds of talks
are very useful for people,
and so I wanna make sure,
whatever I do, whenever I am presenting at a conference,
my talk is refined and has a clear point
and like clear takeaway that I want the person to have
and that I present it well too.
So yeah, one more practice round.
And then at about 5 o'clock today, my time,
is when my talk is, whoo.
I'm gonna do it from right here in my office.
I think I'm actually going to wear this t-shirt as well.
This is a "Bring me the horizon merge"
and like, I don't know,
I just like it, so why not?
But I'm gonna do my hair nice, I think
and maybe put some makeup on as well.
Before that though, we got some work to do.
It was a couple of weeks ago now in our Vlog,
it must've been that, I talked about the fact that,
I was looking for a designer,
to do the next version of our coffee table book series,
that we publish from for Bookkit,
it's gonna officially gonna be a series now with this one,
because this is the second book.
I went through all 111 pages of this PDF, as a sneak peek,
quick sneak peak of some book stuff.
I'm gonna go fast, so you can't really see it too much,
but it's looking really cool and I'm really liking it.
I'm going through and looking at
other people on the team's feedback,
making sure it's all correlated for the designer,
because I know as a designer,
it's really like chaotic,
when you get feedback from lots of different angles.
So for this project,
I'm like managing the design process of it
and being the one to correlate feedback
from the rest of the team,
if that makes sense.
So yeah, I'm just going through and doing that,
I've also got to design a couple of icons today,
I've got to give a presentation
in our team meeting later today, as well,
It's like a day of presenting apparently.
So I've got to prepare for that.
Oh and a wire frame.
Okay, it's gonna be a busy day.
So maybe I should stop vlogging and get into it.
(upbeat music)
I just tuned in for the opening Keynote of config.
And there is such a cool vibe going on,
in this online conference,
it's like wild to me that they've managed to capture that,
with like I guess it's a combination of,
their team driving the hype,
the conference software they chose to use online,
I'm just really impressed
that they have managed to capture some sort of like,
the vibe and excitement of being at a conference
and like having stuff announced.
And I found out just then, watching Dillon their CEO,
present some new features that are coming up,
so that was really cool, and it's gotten me very excited
for my talk later on today.
I'm gonna do another quick run through now I think,
before moving on with getting a digital version
of the wire frame that I was just working on done.
Yeah, let's do it.
Okay, so I have done my makeup, I've done my hair,
looking a bit more presentable,
which always makes me feel more confident,
to go and present something.
I'm watching the live stage right now
and I feel like I'm having to whisper,
because it's like people on stage,
but yeah, I've been joining the talk before mine,
just seeing how things going,
I mean like a little separate backstage area,
so I can talk to the stage managers
and they're like gonna warn me,
just before it's time to go on.
Yeah, all seems very,
very, very well organized this conference.
And I've been seeing lots of people on Twitter.
Yeah, sharing things that they're learning.
So I'm really excited to see what people share from my talk.
One of my favorite things to see when I like do a talk,
do a presentation, is what notes struck a chord with people.
And I usually tell that by what they chose to like,
if it's in person,
take a picture of a slide on the screen and share,
but here maybe there'll be some screenshots
or I dunno, we'll see...
We'll see what happens,
but I'm looking forward to finding out.
I feel ready, I'm feeling confident,
just need to deep breaths, so that I don't talk so fast.
(upbeat music)
Okay, I finished my talk,
it went really well and now I'm like,
scrolling through Twitter
and looking at all the things people said.
This slide here, which I knew was gonna be a good one,
is the one that people have shared a lot.
Oh my gosh, there's so many things people are saying,
check out this,
someone's cat watching my talk,
great love to teach a cat.
(laughs)
Yeah, that was super fun,
I am so happy with how that went.
The talk before me,
they were having some audio issues, like the conference was.
And so I was like, "Ah, am I going to like go over time or?"
I don't know, "Are things gonna be stressful?"
but it went great, the team were very professional
and like got things sorted
and yeah, the reaction was awesome.
I like to scroll through the chat after my talk
and was checking out,
yeah, what people were seeing and noticing.
And along with my talk,
I think I said before, I can't remember for a worksheet,
so people come to this page to download it
and I just checked, let me refresh
in ConvertKit, to see,
how many people have downloaded it already.
We got 55 already have downloaded the worksheet
to work through, so I hope that means,
that those 55 people,
are actually gonna take their time to go through it
and it have some impact on them,
that's the hope anyway.
Yeah, I feel really good about that.
And I'm sure that my Twitter mentions,
are going to keep being on flame emoji.
(laughs)
for the rest of the day.
Now I've got to roll into another presentation,
for work and our team meetings.
So I'm just going to like ride this wave
and ride this endorphin high, although into that-
(upbeat music)
Okay, finished the like second presentation for the day.
And also just realized
I wanted to say that I found my clicker,
I think I mentioned that earlier in the Vlog,
or maybe I was just thinking about it, I don't know.
I found it and I'd been practicing with it,
as soon as I got into doing the actual talk, it didn't work.
I like clicked it twice, it didn't work for me.
And I was like, "I'm not gonna spend time,
trying to make this work, I've got to keep going."
'Cause I was like talking through this time,
so I just switched it and used my keyboard
and I think it was fine,
you gotta be able to adapt.
(laughs)
I finished that wire frame,
I kind of would have shown you on this Vlog or not,
my brain is like getting foggy because it's been like,
I've been on today so much, but yeah.
Got away from done,
so that's good along with some other things.
Yeah, there's still some things in mind actually,
that I didn't get done, but that's okay.
I feel like that always happens,
I tend to always overbook myself every day.
But anyway, thank you for watching this Vlog
and seeing my experience of speaking at remote conference,
at a virtual conference, it was really fun.
I definitely wanna do it again,
and now that I know how it went.
I wish I knew how many people watched my talk, but I do know
that over 80 people now, have downloaded that worksheet.
And so, I'm guessing
there was at least a couple 100 watching,
because obviously not everyone's going to take action.
My Twitter is still blowing up with people saying stuff,
really nice things,
that's really cool, it feels really good.
I love, I don't know,
it's just such a nice feeling when a message lands,
when you put together something,
it was like, trying
to share the way you think about something
and what's worked for you and it works people.
For anyone wondering if the talk
is gonna be out on the figment, YouTube channel,
"In October", they said
So I will make sure to do like a YouTube community post
which I never do when that comes out,
so that you will see it,
but also like share it out on my social media and things,
so follow me over there if you're not already.
Thanks for watching this Vlog,
I hope you've had a good week
and I will see you in the next one, bye.
♪ Melancholy kaleidoscope, it's alright ♪
♪ Can't be one hundred if you're only giving ninety-five ♪
(upbeat music)