Square Island: 2012: Year of Speaking

Happy New Year! 2012 has been wonderful to me. I started out with the goal of becoming a public speaker, with the specific goal of 5 lightning talks and 3 full-length lectures. While I came short on the lightning talks (4 instead of 5), I went way beyond on the lectures (13 instead of 3), speaking at far away places like London, Bucharest and Antwerp. You can see all my talks at my speaking profile. (Yup, I have a speaker profile!)

Besides giving talks, I also wrote a few blog posts on speaking:

All in all, I consider it mission accomplished!

New Resolution?

I really enjoy public speaking, and will continue to do so in 2013 and beyond. I wanted to set a new goal for the new year, but I couldn't come up with a crisp one like last year. Here are a few of my candidates:

1. Mentor others to speak at tech conferences
2. Give a keynote speech
3. Write a book

Mentoring

Mentoring others is a great goal, but I have difficulty coming up with a measurable result. Initially I thought, "put 3 people on stage", but I suspect I won't be the sole reason someone is speaking, so it is really hard to quantify.

Keynote

Keynote speech is an interesting goal. Keynotes open conferences, address to a large crowd with a diverse background, and have everybody take home a learning or two. It is quite a daunting task. My aspiration would be to give a keynote speech that is deeply rooted in my technical knowledge, but unveil general life lessons. I have no idea how I would write a speech like that, and even if I do, keynotes don't have open call for speakers, so I have no idea how I would be invited to deliver one. The lack of a game plan makes me uneasy, but perhaps that's the kind of goal I should shoot for?

Book

For the book, I'd like to write an advanced Android book that expands on my various talks. The main holdback for this goal is the time. I have spoken to many tech book authors, and all of them told me it is a lot of work. More work than you think, and then some more. I have so many projects going on that I am not sure if I should take on such a big goal.

No Resolution

In the end I decided I won't have a new year resolution. I will still mentor others to speak, think about my pie-in-the-sky keynote, and test the writing waters with a chapter or two. But I won't have a resolution with a font-size: 1.8em measurable result like last time ^_^

Source: http://blog.sqisland.com/2013/01/2012-year-of-speaking.html

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