It’s a week away and I’m at that point of being both excited and nervous. It does not matter that I’m regularly in front of large audiences, video, radio, etc. Bottom line, I do still get the jitters before major events and presentations. Imposter syndrome sets in quickly and I begin to doubt myself.
The longer the lead up to an event, the worse my anticipation of failure grows. This one is a relatively quick roller coaster mountain that I’ve been climbing for only a few weeks. While it’s an event for which I’ve never presented before, it is one that I have attended and enjoyed. Plus, it is 100% virtual so there is no additional travel added to my already booked calendar of May craziness.
Our two practice conversations as a panel group have gone exceptionally well. I’m truly pleased by my peers on this one. We all bring our own diversity of thought, experience and style to the panel. Kudos to the organizers on that one. Another plus on the event management team effort has been truly high level speaker communications that have been useful and on-point.
That said. . . when I agreed to be part of this panel there was a piece to the event planning puzzle I did not know! When I met my other panelists and we finalized the what and why of our discussion plan — I was feeling quite confident. That was…. until the Surge Co-Creation website launched and I realize we’d been selected as the keynote panel. Now, the jitters are back.
The upside, however, is that I can’t focus on the nervousness all that much because I have work related meetings and/or family events every day between now and the session. The next week. . . actually next two weeks is summed up in my post from yesterday. Every free moment is about checking lists, getting to done, and moving on to the next thing.
In the end, the busyness of the next several days will get me to 1 May and then the excitement should override the butterflies. I’m sincerely hoping that the same energy and excitement I gain when presenting in front of a live audience or interviewing in front of the camera will also work in this virtual format!
320 Days to go.
#OTR50
Randi S. Sumner 