Originally, I did not intend to write this as a submission or entry into the blogathon, but because I knew everyone would be covering topics related to testing or technical topics. I wanted to share my experiences and challenges with anyone who might be aspiring to be a speaker up and coming.

Every year, people make resolutions or set goals that they want to accomplish or tick off during the course of the year. So like everyone I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish this year. One of them was to become better at speaking. If you are wondering why specifically speaking, there was no particular reason; but as I gained experience I anticipated that I would be involved in multi-stakeholder interactions or required to speak at a local meet up or represent my team, so I thought this might be of use to me. In the year that passed, I had no clue how I intended to accomplish this. But the only thing I knew was that it was something I wanted to accomplish.

What led to the first speaking opportunity and how did I approach it?

The First Opportunity

It came through TestFlix.This was a conference that had speakers from many countries speaking on a variety of topics.I thought it would be a good opportunity to pursue and I decided to participate in it. I had no idea what I would be speaking on at the beginning and I started thinking of topics that I could speak on. I made a list of all the topics I could consider, and there were more than 30 topics I had considered. I was not sure which of these three I would pick from the list as a final set of ones With this I finally narrowed it down to 8 topics after highlighting them in different colors and assigning each a category like good or better. Based on this list, I chose the final three. From this, I picked a topic and began working on it.

Challenge1

The topic I chose was “How to build next generation of leaders in the testing space”. As soon as I started working on the topic, I realized that I had not made any significant progress. I sought help from a senior person in the testing fraternity who had basically given me an outline on how I could construct the talk. But even after that, I was unable to make any progress. Days passed plus frustration added to it when I was unable to make any progress in my talk and I spent a lot of days in worry. As I lacked leadership experience and clarity on the topic, I thought maybe I couldn’t work on this, so I thought I should read books or take input from people so that I could get some insights. For my talk, I asked a few people who had been through the same thing the exact same questions. But this experiment ended up failing for a variety of reasons including not getting any suitable input, a delay in the response, etc. Again, I was faced with the same problem. As a result, I decided to leave this topic and change it to something else.

Lessons learnt: Assessment of strengths and weaknesses before choosing a topic is critical. Analyse them and then choose a topic based on them.Dont choose a topic and then start thinking of all these

Challenge2

I took a pause and then came up with the next topic I could pick up from that list which was” The Power of Testing Communities”. Like the previous topic, I felt that this was also an easy choice and I could move forward without seeking any assistance this time. I was able to make my slide. I was feeling happy to an extent. The next part was to prepare content for the slide and record my talk.I faced numerous challenges on this front.I started feeling my talk was not impactful.I got suggestions from my friends that I should start recording content slide by slide which would help me move forward significantly. This was also in vain. The Actual submission date had arrived and I was still not ready with the content and finally, I had decided to give up which was the worst thing to do, but I thought I had no other choice.

Lesson learned: Seek Help but Never Ever Give Up

Challenge3:

As a result of two failed attempts, I doubted whether I could speak. But with fear in mind, I set out anyway. This time I thought I would speak on something I worked on and know well accessibility, so I had the slides ready. After condensing the slide deck to fit the eight-minute talk, I struggled with what to consider and what not to consider while recording my talk. I managed to condense the deck, but the next thing I struggled with was recording the 8-minute talk. In addition, there were many reasons such as camera consciousness, forgetting the content, no synch between the expressions, becoming blank, feeling nervous, stammering, external disturbances, and a lot more.

Lessons learned: Getting comfortable with camera, deliberate practice, and command over language, learning tips and tricks to record talks from fellow or seasoned speakers, also how to prepare good presentations

I only want to say that I am grateful to have been able to have this conversation after a lot of self-doubt and many emotions. I would have regretted more than regretting not taking this chance.

About Author   

Mahathee is a seasoned software tester working with Persistent Systems Hyderabad as a Senior Engineering Lead Quality. She has been a constant learner and is always curious and enthusiastic in whatever she does. She has been an active member of various testing forums and currently volunteers at The Test Tribe actively. She loves meeting new people and keeping herself active by participating in various initiatives. She believes volunteering is her way of giving back to the community and derives pleasure from it.