Today I start one of the most interesting trips in my life and career as a speaker. I’m currently in Boston, MA for FutureM week where I’ll be speaking on a location panel at GeoM and Inbound Marketing Summit. Tuesday, I’m hosting a live #GEOchat show from SCVNGR HQ. Thursday I’m leaving Boston for Michigan to present at Brandcamp and closing out the week I’ll present in Miami, Fl for Blogalicious 2010. If you count it, that’s 7 days, 3 cities, 2 panels, 2 presentations & 1 live video show.
Earlier this year while planning my schedule I new this week was going to be crazy but now that it’s here I’m shaking my head and asking myself what was I thinking! Everything starts tomorrow and I’m stressed out like Vampire trying to get home before the sunrise. Before agreeing to the events I wasn’t managing the new coworking/incubator office at Designbox. Also I didn’t know how I would feelbleaving LaToya aka “thewife” home expecting as she’s now four months away from #babysutton being born. Regardless, no time for stress, as it’s time to deliver to conference attendees information about why everyone should care about location based services and the upcoming TriOut world edition.
flickr photo By: Stuck in Customs
The end of the road:
Today also starts the end of a two year journey for me. After speaking/presenting and taking part of various panels at meetups, conferences and workshops, the last 10 commitments I have from now to the end of November will be the end of the road for me. Since 2008 I have spoken over 60 times and although at love it, a few things have changed along the way. Somewhere it stopped being fun and more stressful for me. Along with the fact I never thought I was good at speaking anyway and if you would tell some of my elementary classmates that I was speaking at conferences they would laugh knowing that as child I was in speech class from 3rd grade to middle school. Taking some advice from Dennis Crowley, Co-founder at Foursquare, who once told me if he spoke at all the events he was asked to speak at you’ll never get anything done. Plus most of the time before speaking I’m always supper nervous. Add that to the now competitive industry of web/tech speaking, everyone is a speaker now. Also I feel like now is a good time to slow down with LaToya and I expecting our first child, working at Designbox and trying to take TriOut to the next level. Maybe I’ll work on that book I wanted to have done by middle of the year.
I did reach some personal goals in terms of speaking such as being a keynote speaker and speaking at SXSW and BlogWorld but I never did make it to Web 2.0 Expo. Since 2008 I’ve traveled more in my life than I have the previous 32 years. I won’t say that I’ll never, ever speak at a conference or meetup again because of two things. One, money talks and two we still have TriOut to run. Meaning if a conference is beneficial to TriOut, like Where 2.0 we would consider it. I do have a talk submitted for SXSW 2011 that I’m waiting to see if approved and that may be the last time but for now I have 10 events left to close out the year. So, tomorrow starts the beginning of the end at GeoM and it ends at the Internet Summit on November 18 in Raleigh, NC. Seems like a good way to go out being Raleigh is my home.
To everyone who gave me an opportunity speak and/or participate at your event thank you.
