First-time public speaking what a thrill!

What a fun time I had when I held a presentation for the first time for a public audience, yes you guessed it right, Microsoft Security User Group had its first Kick-off event on the 20th of April 2022 and what a thrill, the energy, excitement, engagement, and just a wonderful time finally meeting people after two years of restrictions, we had almost 100+ people in our event.

But to tell you a bit about how I felt during the day and until standing in front of all these people and presenting content about Protecting your digital Identity and Conditional Access.

My day started very well, just finished up the presentation wrote my notes into the PowerPoint note section, and just tweaked the little things, making the presentation 80% good enough, the reason I say 80% good enough is that I’m such a perfectionist and I’ve newly started living towards that things do not always need to be 100% good because it would require so much effort and time, that somewhere between 80-90% good is enough and would be categorized 100% good enough for most of us.

During the day I wasn’t that aware that I was going to be on stage in front of these people, but just went on with my tasks and duties for my job when each hour went by I felt I was building up some tension, excitement, and I was more and more stressed, finally, it was time to travel to Oslo, the way down to Oslo is about 40 minutes ride with the train, I was very calm during my train ride, just finished up sharing links and updates for our attendees that were not able to attend physically and just going through the slide deck for the last time. I arrived in Oslo and had to walk for a few minutes to the Microsoft Norway offices, it was wonderful weather and I enjoyed just walking in the sun, calming myself, and telling myself over and over that this was going to be fine.n

I arrived at Microsoft around 30 minutes before the session, talked with my fellow organizers to go over some things, and then our sponsor which was Microsoft on how to connect my laptop to the system, and how the mics work for us. It was now I felt It was real, in about 40 minutes I was going to stand there in front of a lot of people to present. I remember during that time it felt good, I was not that stressed, but when I saw all the people streaming in, having food, drinks, and just mingling, I have to be honest and say I got a bit stressed.

It’s time! We asked all our attendees to sit down and relax because we were about to start, after waiting a few minutes we started our Kick-off, and the room was almost full of people excited to hear about our User Group and the following presentations, It was now I felt even stronger all the butterflies in my stomach that I had been feeling on and off during the whole day.

We all went through the plan, purpose, and what our User group is all about, and then it was time for me and my colleague to present our 45-minute session about Securing your Identity in the Azure native world.

At the start of the presentation, we began introducing who we are and what we do, after just a few minutes in I felt that all the stress, anxiety, and everything I was worried about just went out the window, I felt calm, relaxed, and enjoyed delivering the content to all those eyes and ears that were pointed towards us, It was a wonderful feeling, we got the attendees to engage as well as there were some questions and discussions, this was one of my high

points during the presentation to get our attendees to engage and share their own experiences as well, the presentation finished and off to a break, during our break, we even got more engagement, after the break, there was another presentation in which one of our organizers held and after that, we had more engagement towards the end of the kick-off, overall it was a wonderful time spent with all our engaged user group members and I’m looking forward to presenting again and very thankful to have the opportunity to share my experience and learn from others.