Last Friday Tom and I took our first steps into the world of public speaking. It was a scary, exciting, nervewracking place to be but we had stuff to say, and a forum where we could say it (without too many rotten tomatoes coming our way).
We were the last speakers of the day at Port80, a brilliant new web conference held here in Newport, flawlessly organised by Joel Hughes. Being last on the bill meant our nerves built throughout the day, especially as the seven speakers before us all nailed their talks, entertained and informed the 140 strong crowd in equal measures.
The talks ranged in topics from content strategy to website speed, project management, responsive web design and everything in between. Tom and I talked about "Personality on the web" because it is a subject close to our hearts, something that we practice every day for ourselves and clients and also because we think it is a topic that can often be lost amongst more technical web related topics.
We were well prepared after a week of refining the talk and making sure we had everything covered, and although it's such a broad subject with several parts lending themselves to their own talks, we had to make sure we kept within our 40 minute time limit.
Our talk covered an introduction to personality, how colour, type and tone of voice all use personality to communicate messages and examples of how it's used effectively on the web.
Despite the nerves we think it went pretty well. We had the odd hiccup, but also a couple of laughs and some great feedback both on Twitter and in person.
We'd like to extend our thanks to Joel and his team for organising the event, the other speakers for inspiring us, the Toward gang for supporting us and for the attendees who came and listened.
Will we take to the stage again? Who knows, we're still on a high from Friday at the moment but in the meantime you can check out our slides here (although they probably won't make too much sense without the words) and if you have any questions about the talk please contact us on Twitter or in the comments below.
