One morning some years ago, when I was a prospect researcher, I was sitting at my desk when I felt a stab of pain in my back. I’d never had serious back pain before, but this felt like a very strong muscle spasm, low down and to one side. I stood up and stretched a bit, hoping it would go away. It got worse — a lot worse.
I stepped out into the hallway, rigid with pain. Down the hall, standing by the photocopier waiting for her job to finish, was Bernardine. She had a perceptive eye for stuff, especially medical stuff. She glanced in my direction and said, “Kidney stone.”
An hour later I was laying on a hospital gurney getting a Toradol injection and waiting for an X-ray. It was indeed a kidney stone, and not a small one.
This post is not about my kidney stone. But it is a little bit about Bernardine. Like I said, she knew stuff. She diagnosed my condition from 40 feet away, and she was also the first person to suggest that I should present at a conference.
At that time, there were few notions that struck terror in my heart like the idea of talking in front of a roomful of people. I thought she was nuts. ME? No! I’d rather have another kidney stone.
But Bernardine had also given me my first copy of Peter Wylie’s little blue book, “Data Mining for Fundraisers.” With that, and the subsequent training I had in data mining, I was hooked — and she knew it. Eventually, my absorption with the topic and my enthusiasm to talk about it triumphed over my doubts. I had something I really wanted to tell people about, and the fear was something I needed to manage. Which I did.
To date I’ve done maybe nine or ten conference presentations. I am not a seasoned presenter, nor has public speaking become one of my strengths. But I do know this: Presenting stuff to my counterparts at other institutions has proven one of the best ways to understand what it is I’m doing. These were the few times I got to step back and grasp not only the “how” of my work, but the “why”.
This is why I recommend it to you. The effort of explaining a project you’ve worked on to a roomful of people you’re meeting for the first time HAS to force some deeper reflection than you’re used to. Never moving beyond the company of your co-workers means you’re always swimming in the same waters of unspoken assumptions. Creating a presentation forces you to step outside the fishbowl, to see things from the perspective of someone you don’t know. That’s powerful.
Yes, preparing a presentation is a lot of work, if you care about it enough. But presenting can change your relationship with your job and career, and through that it can change your life. It changed mine. Blogging also changed my life, and I think a lot more people should be blogging too. (A post for another day.) Speaking and writing have rewarded me with an interesting career and professional friendships with people far and wide. These opportunities are not for the exceptional few; they are open to everyone.
I mentioned earlier that Bernardine introduced me me Peter Wylie’s book. Back then I could never have predicted that one day he and I would co-author another book. But there it is. It gave me great pleasure to give credit to Bernardine in the acknowledgements; I put a copy in the mail to her just this week. (I also give credit to my former boss, Iain. He was the one who drove me to the hospital on the day of the kidney stone. That’s not why he’s in the acknowledgements, FYI.)
Back to presenting … Peter and I co-presented a workshop on data mining for prospect researchers at the APRA-Canada conference in Toronto in 2010. I’m very much looking forward to co-presenting with him again this coming October in Chicago. (APRA-Illinois Data Analytics Fall Conference … Josh Birkholz will also present, so I encourage you to consider attending.)
Today, playing the role of a Bernardine, I am thinking of who I ought to encourage to present at a conference. I have at least one person in mind, who has worked long and hard on a project that I know people will want to hear about. I also know that the very idea would make her vomit on her keyboard.
But I’ve been there, and I know she will be just fine.
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