Last Friday I had the fantastic opportunity to give a lightening talk at View Source 2018. However, I would only have 5 minutes and 20 slides in total, 15 seconds for each slide exactly. I decided to apply for it very last minute and to my shock and surprise, my talk proposal was accepted.

This was my first talk in four years and I was incredibly nervous. Since the slides would move on automatically, I knew that If I had a hiccup (and I did) it would be hard to recover and speed up. I was terrified of leaving things unsaid or not expressing myself correctly.

My talk was related to the indie web, and how I wish our community would blog more and about my fears that make me blog less. The whole morning I was dreading it like I dread waking up at 6am for the gym but in the end the feelings were quite similar. After I finished my talk I was overwhelmed by this sense of relief and of “glad I’ve done this” - similar to the gym.

But then I was so happy and thrilled when I had people coming to speak with me based on the content of my talk and the feedback I received. I tried to cover this in my talk but I am a very anxious person who expects the worst by default. When people were really nice to me and supportive my heart was/is so full. I didn’t even consider that could happen and it is giving me a lot more energy to do other things I want to do.

All the speakers were people I really admire and it was a joy to see their talks. They were amazing and everything I aspire to be. If you didn’t have the chance to attend the videos of the talks are already on youtube (including mine!).

The event was captured a lot in twitter using the hashtag #ViewSource and the photographer, Paul Clarke, has made lots of photos available in Flickr!

And since my talk brought up the indie web, I also had a kind mention in their newsletter!

This talk was also from me to me. It is a bit ironic that I tell people “embrace your fears and blog more!” when my blog isn’t the most active one. The response I’ve received and the people I’ve met because of it highlighted how I am not alone and I’m on the right path to surround myself with positive people.

And to all of you who responded to my message and sent in your blogs, I am humbled and so grateful. Thanks to this experience I discovered really nice blogs:

• Delicious Reverie
• Rick Butterfield's blog
• Danielle A. Vincent's blog

I’d like to thank everyone involved in View Source for this opportunity, everyone who supported me in the days leading up to it, everyone who told me on the day “you can do it”, everyone who took a little bit of their time to give me feedback afterwards. I really appreciate it.

Now, next stop: IndieWebCamp in Berlin and I will be giving a longer version of this talk at TODO London on the 7th of November!