Man, nothing excites and/or terrifies me more than speaking in public.
Speaking at FOSDEM has been a goal of mine, ever since I learned of its existence in 2014. Such a huge event, so many people, so many awesome talks to hear.
When I got accepted this year, I got the familiar feeling: joy of being accepted, the nagging dread of the upcoming event.
I learnt the hard way that speaking at FOSDEM is very different than just visiting. I ended up missing out a lot of the first day because I was panicking in my hotel room doing some last minute changes to slides after talking to a few people the night before.
@PeterSouter comes next \o/ pic.twitter.com/kcV4Db5Nzq
— Bastelblog (@BastelsBlog) January 31, 2016
In the end, I needn’t have worried. The talk went great, and I got some awesome feedback and answered a lot of questions. I’m thinking of tweaking it a bit after talking to some people about their practical steps
"The guys who try to break into your systems aren't constrained by law, whereas you are." – @PeterSouter #FOSDEM
— Diomidis Spinellis (@CoolSWEng) January 31, 2016
. @PeterSouter’s talk on hardening your configuration management was my favorite talk at #Fosdem learned a lot
— Julien Poissonnier (@jpoissonnier) January 31, 2016
It was a great experience and I’m super grateful to the FOSDEM organisers and the awesome friends and colleagues who helped me with my slides and gave me advice for my talk.
