It's been 5 years ago I started with public speaking.
What a journey. So many new opportunities, so many interesting conversations and a few new friends.

A thread

I would never have expected I would get invited to speak at conferences. Even less to get paid by companies to present at their internal events (well, I had to slightly enforce that one a bit)

I would never have expected to be asked to review books
Thank you so much for believing I could bring valuable feedback. I'm very, very honoured. There are no words for this.

I'm still freaking out when speaking in public.
I used to say at the beginning of my presentations: look, I'm shy, introvert, this is a very challenging (this is an understatement), bare with me.
That seemed to help me. Nowadays, I don't dare to say this any more.

I've spoken in front of empty rooms. I once started speaking in front of 5 people at a vendor conference. Eventually attendance increased during the prez by 100% to 10 people. It's not the most pleasant experience. Vendor conferences is a very big mistake.

And I've spoken in front of a packed room with a capacity of 300 people where people were sitting on the floor
I remember thinking: Oh, they've planned me in the smallest room. I guess, that's faire. It's not the topic that will attract a lot of people at a dev conf.

It all started in 2015.

I don't like to be in the spotlights. However, at that time, the team manager of the team I was coaching thought I should get more credit for my work. So he wanted me to come out of the shadow. There was the nudge that got me to propose at 2 conferences.

Little side-note on starting to speak:
At many open spaces the question is asked: how do I start with public speaking. Many times that same advise was given: start small, start at a local user group.
Obviously I didn't do that. Probably, I should have done that.

Eventually I got selected at the 2 conferences with 2 different topics at 1 month from each other (big, big beginners mistake)

@AgileTourBruss 2015 and @xpdaysbenelux 2015

Agile Tour Brussels: "Facts and Fallacies of Continuous Delivery" in a 1h timeslot. Massive failure.

I was so stressed. Didn't slept the night before.
Far too many slides (100 ). Too much content. Impossible.
I ended up almost reading from my slides

Although a failure, it was the trigger for many new encounters.
At Agile Tour, I crossed @BenLinders. I started following Ben on Twitter. Thanks to that, I learned Ben interviewed @SteveSmith_Tech at Agile Tour London. From that interview I learned about @PipelineConf.

Because in 2015 I also decided my focus would be coaching organisations in adopting Continuous Delivery, it was clear I had to attend Pipeline Conf, a one day conference dedicated to Continuous Delivery in London.

I submitted to @PipelineConf and later to @ConLifecycleLon.
I couldn't use Facts and Fallacies of Continuous Delivery because of the failure-link. But it had some good content.
So from that I distilled "Continuous Delivery is more than just tooling, it's a mindset".

The proposal got selected by Continuous Lifecycle.
Not by PipelineConf: too devopsy. I was really pissed off. But, to be fair, the reviewers were really nice. The proposal was almost selected. They feared too much devops because I mentioned the 3-ways.

Never mind, I still attended Pipeline. It was a blast.
By surprise, I met @johnC_bristol at Pipeline. John and I had had some email conversations about the DevOps Ball Point Game.
I also met @ChrisAnnODell, @matthewpskelton and @allankellynet. Marvellous people.

Unfortunately, I didn't met @SteveSmith_Tech. Steve had more important things to do that day. https://twitter.com/SteveSmith_Tech/status/712171266191597568?s=20

PipelineConf is the best thing that could happen to me. I got enrolled in the Continuous Delivery community and over the years I've met so many wonderful people @leenasn, @kenny_baas, @tommysdk, @wouterla, @michieltcs and @karelboekhout And finally also @SteveSmith_Tech

Continuous Lifecycle was going to be the 3th conference I would be speaking at. So, here I was, with a 3th topic to prepare in less than 6 months
I learned from my failure. Applied it to my talk at @xpdaysbenelux which was good. It gave the necessary confidence for the next.

March 2016: Continuous Lifecycle - Continuous Delivery is more than just Tooling, it's a mindset. Very first version.

I could say it was a success. The room was full. Got lots of questions. Some Swiss people active in embedded software (hearing aids) grabbed my attention.

Agile Tour Brussels 2016: Continuous Delivery is more than just Tooling, it's a mindset.

I was planned in the morning single track, 125 people, the biggest audience I ever had Big names of #agile Belgium were present. Wow.

I got the nicest feedback from a woman: you may be shy, nobody noticed that, you did very well!

Continuous Delivery Netherlands 2016: Feature Branching is Evil

I submitted 2 topics: feature branching and the mindset thing. I was expecting they select the mindset one. The conf is rather enterprisey. Look at that: they went for provocation!

That evening I published my slides on Twitter. The reaction was unexpected: a retweet storm

It gave me the confidence to propose at @XPConf (in my mind this was out of reach for me). It got selected

On Monday I'm going to present Feature Branching is Evil for the 23th time at an internal company training.
(people keep asking for that one)

I'm proud. I travelled a lot. I've met so many wonderful people. It energised me. It gave me so much confidence. It helped me getting out of my introvertness and shyness.
But I'm so tired. So f**ing exhausted and feeling so lonely. I need a break.