Abby’s been preparing a presentation to her class about Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, who apparently also “did a lot of other stuff”, including being a nurse during the Civil War. Abby’s got the good bits down - she seems to know her subject well, which is the best start for any public speaking gig.

I’ve done a few of my own presentations of this nature over the years. There was the 2nd grade play of Stone Soup, where I was one of the two main characters. Due to a cancellation of a scheduled presentation, my friend and I ended up giving a short presentation on model rocketry to our day camp. I also presented a book report on Tom Sawyer around 7th grade or so, where I did like her and dressed and talked in the period of the character. Both my book and my report used the “N” word, which was quite scandalous in middle school.

There weren’t many big presentations in high school or college that I recall. I do remember reading some writing aloud in a couple of writing classes I took at West Chester after I was done with college proper. It was fun watching the kids go through the nervousness of standing in front of other people and talking; something that would in any other setting be so natural for them to do.

I think sometime after college I just stopped being bothered by speaking in front of people. Sure, there’s a usual kind of nervousness, wondering if you’ve got a good handle on the source material, have the ability to answer questions, and so on, but actually standing in front of people and talking really doesn’t bother me these days.

There was once a presentation I gave for work about the product we were building to a programming user group. We sponsored the evening’s event and so got a few minutes to speak on the topic. The presentation was a nightmare. I didn’t really know the material very well because the material was not mine but “edited” by the company marketing. I wasn’t speaking strictly about development to developers, I was presenting scripted marketing jargon. I wasn’t too bothered about the whole thing until I got to a point in the presentation where I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to talk about next, and my notes were incomplete. I just stood there for what seemed like 30 seconds or so, doing and saying nothing. Kind of humiliating.

But I think that once you have that experience, it’s not a big deal. When everything goes wrong that you dread, and you finally experience it, and it turns out it’s not world-ending… It’s sad that it happens, but it’s good that in the end you realize that nothing can really go wrong that you can’t handle, or at least slink away from to try better next time.

Since then, of course, I’ve done a bunch of presentations to other groups of various sizes. I’m looking forward to doing it again, this time at BarCamp Harrisburg where I hope to talk about what non-technical people - folks who are more business-minded or novices at computers - need to know about web hosting and development to make sure that their businesses work. It should be a good talk, and I think I’ve got enough basic knowledge that, even if I had to wing it, it would probably come out pretty good. But given a couple of weeks to prepare, I’m looking forward to having a very educational, information-rich session that hopefully folks will walk away from with a good base knowledge and an impression of my confidence.

Hopefully, Abby does as well at her presentation today.