I have been trying to overcome my public speaking fears for a while. So when I saw a call for speakers for Web Directions’ What Do You Know? event, I thought I had to do this. At that time, I was fiddling with my Jekyll blog quite a lot. So I shot a proposal to Jhon Allsopp about this, and he agreed.

So what is this What Do You Know? event is all about? From the event description:

Back again for the first time in 2016, What Do You Know? brings you new, upcoming and seasoned speakers, talking about something they know well in a lightning 5 minutes.

So basically, it’s a lightning talk series. I decided to cover some anecdotes regarding my attempts at blogging over the years and give a brief overview of blogging with Jekyll and hosting it on GitHub. I took a few days to prepare the slides (with the challenge of keeping everything within 5 minutes) and turned up on the day. There were a few more novice speakers like me and a few experienced ones. The event started with a good talk on public speaking by Sarah Ewen from Public Speaking for Life. Indeed, her speech helped to steady my nerves. I did okay; the starting was good, and then, in the last part, I mumbled a bit to finish everything in a hurry. Overall, it’s an excellent experience and thanks to Web Directions for giving me the opportunity. You can find my slides from that night here.