21–30 of 138 posts
I've not gotten particularly good at it. As I often say: "I'm quite comfortable, speaking in public, but I'm not very good at it. That's a really bad combination."
Jokes aside, kudos to Mr Fowler for the decision. I'm sure we are all going to benefit even more from his focus to writing and things that don't make him miserable.
There have been a lot of character assassination's on prominent white men in the conference space by far left extremists. I wonder how much of his anxiety can be attributed to seeing colleagues go through that?
Unexpectedly personal, but I'm happy he's sharing this with us. We're all human, eh?
His work introduced me to eXtreme Programming, UML, Refactoring and more. Much of the agile tooling used nowadays are a consequence of effort he and the groups he was a part of put forth. The book Analysis Patterns is very underrated IMO and was a breath of fresh air after futzing around with the SAMS Teach Yourself series books that were undeservingly popular back then.
I think of Fowler as a virtuoso when it comes to explaining practical software matters. I haven't watched much of his talks, but I've read most of his books and PLoP papers.
I'm glad he's going to focus more on writing and helping others with theirs.
I can relate to the anxiety before something like that which often then disappears when you start. I feel similarly before technical interviews and it’s really unpleasant, the fear holds you back from doing things you’d otherwise want to do. It’s hard to evaluate sometimes or be honest with yourself if you’re making a decision based on what you want or if it’s a rationalization to avoid the fear. I often suspect a lo…
We are all nervous in job interviews. The best ones flow once they start.
Then one poster I submitted got upgraded to a talk, which brought me over the tipping point, and I quit.
I keep wondering if I could have done more to desensitise myself to it, but the anxiety was never decreasing, if anything, it was getting worse each time. I tried therapy, medication, Toastmasters, martial arts classes and dance lessons (which became my hobby, incidentally), and even vocal lessons (since I was particularly self-conscious about my voice), all to no avail.
So now I have a co-founder to do all and any public speaking, and I do not plan to put myself in front of a crowd ever again. But I feel I'm missing a part of life by it.
Martin - if you're here, and would want to continue speaking were it not for the physical problems you face - perhaps you should give beta blockers a shot? Side effects are uncommon, risks are low, addictive potential is low, so doctors are generally willing to prescribe them if the patient requests it. It sounds like you're just experiencing stage fright. Many professional performers get this way, and beta blockers…
I understand why people do it if their job relies on it...but the point of taking medication is so you can expose yourself to the fear, and then don't need the medication at all at some point...not using it as a coping strategy.
I have gone through something similar, unfortunately something significantly more disruptive. And I have succeeded and failed more than anyone over ten plus years...medication isn't anything. Your choices are: expose yourself to the situation and hope it goes away, or avoid it totally (and btw, both are fine choices...I think people assume that the latter is failure but life is complicated, sometimes it isn't possible to get over it...choosing not to do public speaking and talk openly about why, imo, takes some guts).