Post-game analysis 📈
The good, bad and ugly of my ProductCon London talk; and reasons to keep saying yes.
📌 ICYMI here’s the talk and the slides.
Before you read on, let me just say this: If you ever do a big recorded talk like this, please:
Overcome your discomfort/ cringe 😳 and do a play-by-play review afterwards like any serious athlete would;
For objectivity, give it a few days before you do so to let your adrenaline 🎢 or other emotions and the influx of social media love subside;
It can be embarrassing/ mortifying, but remember to be 🥰 kind to yourself.
Audience feedback 💬
I corresponded with as many individuals as possible post-talk to gauge what their thoughts, summarised here:
General
A little nervous at the beginning but got comfortable fast 😌
What folks loved 💙/ resonated
The Cadbury 🍫 example really hit home
Lots of pauses to take in info, nice storytelling
Current, practical, first-hand examples
The importance of cross-team alignment
Emphasis of the need to understand your customers and create locally relevant products 🌏
The importance of context related to the maturity/ size of company & product
What folks would have loved to see
An example (eg. country/ cultural comparison) & lessons learnt from taking a product international, what worked vs didn’t
Review of product international expansion, what worked ✅ vs didn’t ❌
Self assessment
🏆 Wins
I am proud of the fact that I did a super scary thing 🫣 that many would not have said yes to. I survived, so I can do it again and go on to do bigger things too.
I took a leap of faith and trusted myself. I didn’t let my imposter syndrome take complete control.
Overall I delivered well and spoke at a good pace and naturally 🧘🏻♀️.
My Japanese opening & Cadbury example 🍫 were effective & relatable. I kicked off with a strong start, particularly for a 🥱 morning crowd who may not have had their first coffee ☕️.
I used a blend of storytelling and concrete, first-person examples to make my points.
I was courageous in tackling a complicated & vast topic. 🌏 International expansion is something many companies try to do but fail to.
Overall score - 7/10
Content 7/10 - Cut to the chase ✄ with simpler examples
Slides 6/10 - Not happy with the weak storytelling & text density of slides 13, 15, 17, 18 & 19
Delivery 8/10 - For the minimal time I invested into delivery, I did quite well with no major hiccups, good pace and held the audience’s attention. 😌
Iterations for next time (stacked) + Reflections
Get rounds of feedback
My travel schedule & time zone meant I had to work primarily in isolation and didn’t have the time I wanted for feedback, so budget ample time (at least a week) for this next time and work backwards ⏮.
Get design help to polish up 💅🏼 my slides
Recognise that this is something I won’t ever be self-sufficient with and just has to ask for 🙋🏻♀️ help.
As mentioned I chose not to use the Twilio corporate slides template. The corporate slides template would only have resolved the aesthetics but not the storytelling, so design help is still required.
Be more concise with my content
I didn’t do a great job in keeping it to-the-point 📍 and clean. This was a problem with the second half of my talk, where I went into my learnings using examples. It showed up in my content, script and slides.
Increase audience interactivity 🔀
This would have kept things more lively & folks engaged for the 2nd half of my talk, maybe something as simple as a ‘show of ✋ hands’.
[Maybe] Memorise my script
So I don’t have to rely on the prompt monitors and be able to look up more, which would have been much better for online viewers. 🥺 Sorry!
My hesitation is this would require more prep time, which I’m not sure I can always afford.
Reasons to continue saying YES ✔︎
Frankly, I was surprised when Product School reached out with the speaker invite. I didn’t know why they chose me. I wasn’t a seasoned public speaker, nor was I a product content producer. In short, I was unproven 😳. I fought against my self doubt and said yes without truly understanding what I signed up for. I then contemplated pulling out many times before the day arrived, came up with all sorts of reasons (ahem, excuses 🙄) to justify not following through. The prep took effort and the event itself was scary & stressful, and as you see in this post my execution was far from perfect.
But was the risk & sweat 💦 worthwhile? Absolutely. I learnt so much from this experience, as you see from this and my last blog post. Not only as a novice 🐣 public speaker, but I also discovered about myself as I reasoned with my choices & approach. We are all works-in-progress. No one is born having known everything. (Can you imagine how 🥱 boring their life would be?!) As a lifelong learner, there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to try doing something new, maybe clumsily at first, and iterating towards 💃🏽 mastery. After all learning is scientifically proven to be a source of happiness 🥰. It has certainly been true for me.
If there’s one thing I learnt from my career, it is - When someone you respect gives you a job you think you are not ready for, learn to sit with your discomfort and overcome your inner imposter. Give that person some credit, they want you to succeed too. So if they think the risk is worth taking, why don’t you? 🙌🏼
You will always find a million reasons to say no, but it just takes one to say yes. For the love of learning 💚, please do.