How it went at JDC 2010

Place: Sonesta Hotel, Cairo, Egypt.
Time: Sat, 27th of Feb, 9 am- 7pm

Sharing my experience about speech about cloud computing at the JDC 2010 conference

It was a nice event,
The start was simple and quick; a call from a previous co-worker who is a technical committee member, to participate and share the Cloud Computing Topic i've been living in for two years now :) to people attending JDC 2010, I sent the presentation proposal and i got instructions on what to do and after this is all preparation and preparation :)

Event Day, Sat, 27th of Feb, 9 am- 7pm
let me share with you my experience about giving a public speech to over 300 audience I don’t know ... I stood up the stage following my previous fellow speaker, I thought some noise or stepping in or out the room will happen, but it was not so, actually. People get more into the room, silent with quick moves.. The session moderator welcomed me with the audience to start on. The machine restarted, the mic was echoing my voice sometimes, which made it hard to follow much, besides time was very constrained, I got to finish a 50 minutes presentation in only 30 minutes :)

I got impressed with some of the audience who were concentrating and started asking smart questions! :) lucky me! “Someone- is-following” sign blinked in my head :) and I even rewarded one with a technology book given by the JDC organization board, and an Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud CD from many I’ve ordered specially for the event.

After my session ended and people greeted me, I wanted to run to the first water bottle, I was so dehydrated!, but while I was going off the stage, a few came to me with questions one following the other, I moved with the group surrounding me out of the room to give time to my next speaker and had a very happy 30 minutes of questions and answers with them, I felt relieved when I saw their faces expressed satisfaction to their concerns and open questions, it is really hard to communicate new-to-the-mind concepts, but what a victory to the oneself when it is digested properly



I told them about the coming cloud camp in Egypt, and some of them were interested to volunteer and some were interested to attend this event ...









Later on, I mingled with attendees, talking to them explaining what they missed from the session unpleasant mic situations :), and I was happy filling some of the gaps I saw happened.

In the lunch break, all speakers gathered in an open buffet lunch, when I had nice talks with Fred Sauer(from Google), Sang Shin(Sun), Amr ElAdawy(Itsalat Egypt) and Mike Keith(Oracle),…, It was really exciting to meet those guys from all over the world, and corporate, and really see Egypt in the Technology Track, never behind!

Well, the day came to an end, All in all, it was not that bad to me, but still learnt some public speaking experiences those we all as Egyptians hide or don’t really see them important till we face them :)

* As Organizer: Public Events organization and moderation is a very important Topic! And effort, and what makes an event goes up or down.. it is never getting the best speakers, it is never getting best catering service, or most prestigious booth, or promotional sponsors bags as we used to see in faculty days :)..it is all about as organizer, always be in service and duty every minute, responsive, and effective!

* As Speaker: You have to equally give time to your presentation and to your audience, and make sure you are giving attention to all audience all areas, not part of them who you think they look focused, you have to target all the room

* As Speaker: When talking about new concepts, don't assume that the attendees were living with you in your topic and know everything you know, you should go with their level of knowledge and respect that

* As Speaker: Manage your presentation time yourself, get a stop watch, mark your given time by organizer, and challenge yourself, the more you manage your time, the more engagement and communications with audience you can do :)

* As Speaker: In your presentation, don’t block your topic thread, if you see you want to talk outside the presentation as long as there is a value of what you are going to say, do it! And don’t narrate the slides when you don’t have much to say and take care of your audience, if they got bored, you are dead! And it is harder for your to get them awaken again

* As Speaker, Keep eye contact with your audience, feel their needs of your session, give them what they need, and never think you should be silent after session ends, the whole hall area is for talking and talking again :)

Nice experience huh :) ?! what do you think :)