I have been working at RawWorks for some time now, I mentioned a few times that my colleagues Eltjo van Gulik, Ryan Ververs – Bijkerk, Gerjon Kunst, and a few others regularly speak at events. I was very curious about their experiences, so I asked how do you do that? What are you talking about? How does it feel to be on that stage?

After all, I had never been on a stage myself, but the more I talked about it with colleagues the greater the drive became. I thought maybe I should start with a user group. But which one, how do you get in touch with those people?  Well, that answer is quite easy. Just send them a message.

Ok, back to my story, on a Friday afternoon, I had a chat with some colleagues. In the Netherlands, we say “frimibo” (Drinking a MEMbeer on Friday afternoon with colleagues). After a while, we were back at the topic:  speaking at a public event. We saw the speaker request of Experts Live. I asked Gerjon to join me and speak together. My first thought was let’s go. It’s my native speaking language so that makes it a little bit easier to be on stage.

Gerjon and I scheduled a meeting to think about the topic of our session. We worked that out and submitted our session. I was getting already so much energy from thinking about the session, I asked another colleague to submit a session with me as well. So, two sessions were submitted for Experts Live.

After a few weeks, I received an e-mail my session with Gerjon was approved. I started thinking about it and I got nervous.