Tuesday, May 29, 2007

I am not nervous

So what if public speaking scares more people than spiders, air planes, death and proposing marriage combined? And who cares if we ended up needing a locomotive factory to fit all the people who registered for Developer Day? None of this make me the least bit nervous about presenting on Thursday. Why? Because I will be speaking about one of my favorite topics!

Well three of my favorite topics, actually, each with enough meat to easily fill up my 45-minute slot: Google & Open Source, Google APIs, and Google Web Toolkit. Ah, so much to talk about, so little time...

I'll start by outlining why and how Google loves Open Source. Next I get to enumerate Google's rapidly growing list of APIs. (Happily, some of my colleagues will spend their 45 minute slots diving further into some key members of said list.) Last but certainly not least I get to talk about my currently favorite development tool: Google's Web Toolkit. I have spent the last 3 years or so hand-rolling AJAX for Google Maps, using an emacs editor and whichever JavaScript debugger comes with the 4 top browsers. Using GWT with a modern Java IDE such as Eclipse feels like returning to the 21st century from the dark ages! (Or at least to the late Nineties...) I'll try explaining why and hopefully even have time for a quick demo. It all adds up to being a great day for developers and Googlers alike and I look forward to presenting to you all on May 31st.

Lars Rasmussen - Software Engineer

4 comments:

Sherif said...

We are all looking forward to it!

cmroanirgo said...

Having played in a band for several years, as well as the occasional Eisteddford as a child, I have found a couple of nifty ways of not getting jittery:

Don't think about it. Really.

i) Distract yourself. Play some Heavy Metal or something to get the blood fired up. Go outside and jump up and down. Do NOT sit alone brooding. Get into a conversation. Tell some jokes.

ii) Tilt your head forward. Strange, I know. But I remember hearing somewhere years ago (so this is a completely unsubstatiated comment) that the Brain has a physical 'switch' between Fear and Excitement. If your head tilts back, you feel things as Fear, tilting your head forward changes that into Excitement. So, tilt your head forward.

iii) Rather than imagining everyone in the audience in their underwear (a truly scary prospect for a room full of Developers), perhaps try imagining how much methane gas is being generated by all those people out there.

Then again, you did clear say that you are NOT scared....so I have just been wasting my time writing this comment. ;-)

raphael said...

Don't you mean to say "presenting on Thursday"?

Julian Sonego said...

Yes, we did mean Thursday and have corrected it. :)