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I spoke at the TEDx Kanata event and to be honest, I still haven’t come down from the high of it all. This was absolutely one of the greatest highlights of my life and I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity and even more fortunate to get to share it with all of you!Since I first announced that I would be giving a TEDx Talk, I’ve gotten a lot of questions, most people wanting to know how the heck this happened!? I’m still not entirely sure, but today I wanted to sit down and share my experience with your from beginning to end to give you an idea of how I landed this amazing opportunity and what it meant to me.
How did you apply?
I searched the TEDx website for all the events that were happening in my area. Once I found a handful, I went to their respective websites and sent out about written proposals to about 5-6 different events.
What happened after you were selected?
I found out in early October that my proposal was one of the ones selected to come to an in-person audition at the beginning of November. I had just under a month to prepare a 5-minute speech to pitch my TED Talk to a couple hundred local community members in Kanata and the TEDx Kanata team. About two weeks after I did the in-person audition I found out that I had been selected as one of the eight finalists to speak at the event on March 1st. From there, everything happened very quickly.
How did you prepare?
After I found out that I had been selected, the TEDx Kanata team assigned each speaker a speaking coach to help with preparing for the event. I had bi-weekly Skype sessions with my amazing coach, Terry Lipovski, who helped me tremendously with stage presence. We then also had two in-person rehearsals; one at the end of January and one in mid-February, where we actually had the chance to get up and rehearse our presentations with our slides in front of our speaking coaches and other some of the other speakers. On my own, I tried to practice my speech 3 times a day to make sure I really had it memorized. (I’ll be honest, I didn’t always meet this goal, and found myself stressing weeks before the event when I hadn’t practiced my speech in a few days.) One of the best things that I did to prepare, was ditch my notes. I wrote the main ideas of my speech on sticky notes and stuck them to my bedroom wall and used those to direct me through my speech; this was one of the best things that I did to help me memorize my speech while still it conversational.
We’re you nervous?
This is probably the question that I get asked the most and it’s funny because for most of the time leading up to the event I wasn’t really nervous. Even up to the day of the event, I was calm and confident, and just really excited to get on stage. I only got nervous about 15 minutes before I was set to go on – and when I say I was nervous; I mean I was FREAKING OUT! I was so nauseous, my heart and mind were racing, and my legs wouldn’t stop shaking. If you want to know how I finally calmed down before I hit the stage, check out the full story in my YouTube video.
What was your favourite part?
This entire experience was so incredible that it’s hard to pick out just one great moment. I had such a great time building connections with the other speakers and having the opportunity to hear all of their own unique stories. Being able to work with such talented people was so humbling and it was a huge learning experience for me. I feel like this an entire experience helped me grow so much as a public speaker, a writer, an advocate, and a person.
What’s next?
The million-dollar question! If it isn’t obvious, I really love public speaking. I think that it’s such an effective way to connect with an audience on a much deeper and personal level than you can through writing blog posts and I really appreciate the value in it and want to continue doing more of it. TEDx Kanata was my third public speaking event in 2018 and one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to participate in five different events this year, so I’m looking for two more opportunities to share my story and connect with an audience.
