25 Jun 2018 |
Personal Development,
Professional Development
I’ve been having conflicting throughts about public speaking recently. Last week I was asked to be filmed as part of a promotional video for work about one of my projects. Last month I was in a video for Code for America about employees in “public interest technology” that was shown on the main stage at the CfA Summit. I was also the Data + Donuts speaker for May and presented about a work projects.
I had a little bit of experience being on stage when I was in high school because I played the erhu. My teacher was a performer who felt the best way for her students to improve was to force them to perform on stage. So, I performed at school, at local events, at community/senior centers, etc. I’ve also performed as part of Chinese orchestras. All that experience helped me get over my initial shyness over being in front of a crowd.
Fast forward though college and several years of work and I hadn’t really needed to be in front of a crowd. It wasn’t until I joined the Hack For LA core leadership team and we started hosting hack nights in 2016, that I ever even needed to speak in front of a group. In the past, performing did not require I speak and introduce myself. The emcee did that. So now all of a sudden, I would occasionally need to lead hack nights. It wasn’t too bad because it was only around 20 people, and I chat with them before and after so they’re not complete strangers.
Around the same time at work, we started doing presentations to other departments. These were scripted, with PowerPoint slides and everything. I’d get super anxious, trying to remember what to say and how to say it. I wanted to make a good impression of myself, my team, our project, and my department. That’s a lot of pressure!
Fast forward again to this year. I gave was the Data + Donuts speaker for May. It was my first time doing a presentation in front of a public audience! I was nervious, anxious, all the -iouses I could be, staying up until 2am the night before prepping for my talk. It went well, no major hiccups. I was able to answer several questions without blanking. People even came up and talked to me after, which I consider to be a success in connecting useful information to the audience. My friends and coworkers who observed my presentation said I did a great job and they loved my slides.
I was asked to be in a CfA video about “public interest technology” workers to be shown at the CfA Summit. The videographer called me a natural, which certainly bumped up my ego a notch. Of course, I then mentally dismissed what he said as just a niceity meant to make me feel better about myself. I reinforced that thought when the final video came out and I found so many faults with myself. What did I even expect with that first video - that I would be perfect the first time I ever had to speak into a recording camera? At Summit, after the video played, there were a couple people who specifically came to find me. Some random people I talked to said I looked familiar and realized it was because of the video. All-in-all, it was pretty cool.
Last week I was asked to be in a video about one of my projects. We went through several takes with many adjustments, but I was noticeably not as anxious as the other guy they were filming. My coworkers and even my Division Chief called me a natural. I wanted to say NO - I’ve just had some experience doing public speaking and being on camera. But I figured that might make me sound like a prick so I just said ‘Thank You’.
In light of all these recent opportunities, I started wondering about public speaking as a skillset that I’ve always felt compelled to improve at. Specifically - why have I felt compelled to be good at public speaking, and is it necessary? Plenty of people (like the coworkers I’m surrounded by) never do ANY public speaking that I can tell. Why do I put myself through all the anxiety and fear of humiliating myself? Could I not just decide that I don’t like it and don’t want to do it, then refuse all offers to speak and still be considered normal? Could I just get over my over-achieving self and accept that I didn’t have to be good at EVERYTHING?
I talked to Lawrence about all this, as I usually do. He said he thought I WAS a natural at public speaking. Everyone gets anxious, so that’s not a good indicator. According to him, the fact that I’ve been able to take it on and improve on my skills in such a short time so that people have started complimenting me is proof of that. As for why it’s necessary, he pointed out that the skills that make you good at public speaking also translate into skills needed to transition into management. Thus, being good at public speaking IS useful if I see my career path moving towards management.
It’s a lot to get comfortable with, and I’m still going through the process.
22 Jun 2018 |
Reading
How do I aggregate and track my reading lists?! I’ve got lists of books split up between my physical notebook, this blog, a Google Drive sheet, an Amazon wishlist, and my Goodreads account. In addition, I’ve got online articles bookmarked through Twitter, Feedly, and Pocket.
The books span a variety of subjects: product management, leadership, communication, civic tech, behavioral economics, business, management, ethics, equality, entrepreneurialism, Lean, Agile, UX, writing, personal development, self-help, etc.
I’d like to be able to group them by subject(s), read status, priority, rating, etc.
It would be useful to track this information not just for myself, but so I can easily round up a list of recommended books for friends.
18 Jun 2018 |
Life
“It’s been busy” has been a common response every time someone asks me how I’ve been. Since I last posted, I’ve been up in the Bay Area for 9 days. The first weekend Lawrence and I stayed in Sunnyvale. We slept and ate, and did barely anything else. We watched Avengers: Age of Ultron. We had drinks and dinner with Megan & Zach.
The rest of the week was consumed by civic tech. From the NAC in-person meeting day, to Brigade Day, to the two days of the Code for America Summit, to Saturday’s bike ride with Hunter and two of his civic tech friends, and finally a car ride back to Los Angeles with Hunter and Vyki.
The 2 weeks after have been non-stop with work, introductions, meetings, and changes. I’m feeling the creeping anxiety of recognizing that I’m hurtling forward like a train at full speed. Too sharp of a curve in the tracks and I’ll derail. Writing here has been a good way to slow down and reflect.
As of today, I’m on a 30-day (maybe 60-day) keto diet plan. I’ve felt rather dissatisfied with my physical state the past several months and Lawrence was willing to commit to prepping a meal plan for the both of us. Today’s lunch was a 500 calorie meal of chicken thigh and roasted cauliflower, topped with chili oil. Dinner will be the same. Tomorrow I’m supposed to skip food. For this to work, I’ll need to distract myself enough all day long so that I don’t think about food.
16 May 2018 |
Professional Development,
Community
How do you get a group of community organizers to spend even more time organizing their community of organizers? Case in point, myself. It struck me how recently, my potential for commitments has skyrocketed exponentially. A brief timeline, which I’ll add to as things come to mind or as they change:
2015
- Work
- Hack for LA attendee
- MaptimeLA attendee
- Learn to Code LA attendee
- Hack for County of LA - founder/organizer
2016
- Work
- Hack for LA leadership
- MaptimeLA leadership
- Women/Tech events attendee
2017
- Work
- Hack for LA leadership
- MaptimeLA leadership
- Data + Donuts organizer
2018
- Work
- Hack for LA leadership
- MaptimeLA leadership
- Data + Donuts organizer
- Code for America National Advisory Council member
- Code for California organizer
- County Wordpress User Group organizer
- Data Science Forum attendee
- Street Quality Analysis of Crowdsourced Imagery project collaborator
- potential Women in Technology Employee Association organizer
- potential Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition board member
- potential Toastmasters attendee
- potential Homelessness spending data committee member
14 May 2018 |
Personal Development
What I do in my life has changed so much in the last 5 years. I don’t know if I ever imagined that I would be communicating with people I don’t know or barely know on such a regular basis. I’m in a constant state of being self-conscious of first-impressions. I need to convince them that I’m smart, sincere, competent, and that we can mutually benefit each other. It doesn’t matter if it’s in person or through email. I’m still anxious enough about using the phone that I avoid cold calling.
In person interactions and written emails each have their own unique situations. Because it happens so frequently these days, I have to limit the amount of time I spend crafting each email I make. I can’t be a perfectionist about it. I have to ignore the self esteem issues and insecurities, in fact I have to spend time at the other end of the spectrum trusting in myself and that my experience will allow me to write something perfectly servicable. That’s not to say I don’t still get analysis paralysis when having to write emails. It’s just much easier these days - I’m not hovering over the send button for 4 hours.
Meeting people in person is something I actually prefer these days. Now THAT, I don’t think I ever imagined. It’s real time, you can’t carefully form a thought without that factoring into the other person’s impression of you. What changed? I think it’s just having more experience talking to people and thinking on my feet. Especially people who are kind and patient, who I could learn to interact with in a safe space without judgement. I’ve also actively observed and identified ways in which other people interact that address the fears that I have. Need a second to form your thoughts? Say so. People don’t really judge that. Listen and don’t speak over others. Respond to what they’re saying in a way that is contributory instead of using it as an opportunity to talk about yourself. Find something interesting in what they’re talking about, and express that interest in a sincere way. Constantly adjust… you’re getting continuous feedback from the other person’s expressions and body language. Iterate on your communication strategy in real time.
One thing I didn’t anticipate about all this communication is how tiring it is. I used to see it as a linear process. Conversations, at least as reflected in an instant messaging type conversation, are linear in that only one person or the other is speaking at a time. Theoretically, the conversation topic matter also follows that one topic at a time thread. But when communicating with people, the things that require mental notetaking and eventual follow through are like a tree layout. One conversation leads to many threads, each which can lead to many sub-threads. Some require one party or the other to follow up on through actions. Some need to be held in memory because so you can connect this person with another person that you had a matching sub-thread conversation with.
A lot of what I do these days is connecting these people, those sub-threads. That’s a lot of work because it’s not a one person to one sub-thread framework we’re dealing with here. It’s one person to many sub-threads, making for many-to-many connections that need to be identified. And all this is kept in my head. Is there any good reason this isn’t sitting in a database? Probably not, except for the time and effort spent creating this tool that I then have to maek sure I actually use. That would be an interesting thing to do… and I suppose it would work kind of like the failed Google Circles, or like Twitter Lists, except from the perspective of tagging an individual with all the subjects I associate them with. I think I’d need a separate set of relationships for subjects that are related so I can visualize potential connections that don’t have directly related subjects. For example, people working on LA County’s Vision Zero initiative and people involved with BikeSGV.