welterweightUX

Today I did my first ever “speaking engagement” outside the confines of my corporation.

My dad’s a member of the Racine, WI Founders Rotary club. Knowing that a lot of other members are small business owners, he asked me to give a high level presentation on creating good user experience on their websites.

The main things I harped on were:

• Knowing why you’re creating site
• Knowing who your users are & speaking to them in ways they understand
• Content strategy

A few things I learned:

• The nervous quivers in your voice dissipate pretty quickly
• If you care about what you’re discussing, don’t worry about having too little to say—you’ll probably go over your allotted time
• Just because you ask for audience participation doesn’t mean you’ll get it (does anyone have a good plan for spurring involvement?)
• Doing a primer-type presentation on a subject you know well can really help you re-think your outlook. It also make you think deeply about how to best communicate those ideas without using icky jargon or overly technical terms. These are good things to purge.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to being able to present again in the future. Hopefully on something a little more challenging and specialized. But it was really great to test the public speaking waters in the way I did today.

Huzzah, indeed.