My First Tech Talk: Snowflake Data for Breakfast

April 24th, 2024 (23 days ago) • 4 minutes

Daffy and I presenting on Data Governance

I spoke at my first event on stage today for Snowflake's Data for Breakfast!

I was nervous, but I think I did well. At least it was better than I thought I will do.

It was 8.30a.m when I reached Muzium Negara, the train station interconnected to Aloft Hotel, KL Sentral. The walk there is further that I thought, plus I thought I was late for the rehearsal, so I walked faster. It was I think 5 escalators (including the one I took wrongly!) to reach the hotel.

When I reached, Chang Boon, the sales engineer handling MoneyLion greeted me. We just exchanged some life updates and talk about our week. Just the usual stuff. Then I went into the hall to get prepared for the rehearsal.

I was mic-ed up, given a clicker and was told to stand on stage to practice getting a feel of the surroundings. I also went through the slides a last time to make sure everything is as expected. Shortly after, my teammate Daffy arrived and he did his part of the rehearsal.

Then, we were given some time to have breakfast outside. It was a buffet style breakfast - I didn't get to eat much because the time was short. We met some of our colleagues as well as ex colleagues from our previous company. It was so nice to have someone you know around in a big event like this.

At 9.30am, the event started. It was a full house at about 200 people (I heard 400 people registered but due to space limitation, they had to cap the number). My talk is the last one in the morning session so we had plenty of time to sit down and listen to the other speakers.

Sitting in the crowd

I remembered the room was super cold, so I stepped out to grab some hot drinks. I learned that peppermint tea is such a good drink to have before presentations. It helps to calm down your nerves plus warms you up in the cold room.

Peppermint Tea is OP

At 11.10 am, it was my turn. I got mic-ed up again, and then walked up the stage as I was announced by the MC. I remember looking at Sam Altman from his talk at OpenAI Dev Day just before I went up so I can emulate some of his confidence. Well it sort of worked?

I went to the middle, hands to the side, and started my talk.

"Good Morning, everyone", I said. "Thank you for joining the first ever Data for Breakfast 2024 in KL!".

That 2 sentence was all I needed to calm the remaining nerves I had. I was in the zone. I went through the slides, and I remembered to look at the audience every now and then. I also remembered to smile and be aware to be in the middle more often than not.

Daffy and I split the presentation in half, so I passed on the talk to him when it was close to the 10 minutes mark. The most memorable part was when we did the slap handshake (the one you do before a bro hug).

I think we did well. I was proud of myself. I was proud of Daffy. I was proud of the team.

After the talk, we had a photography session and lunch. Some audience approached us to know more about our setup and how we did things. It was a good feeling to be able to share our knowledge and experience with others.

I went back to the office after lunch. I was tired, but I was happy.

I want to do this again.