That's "Professor Kimota94," To You!

OK, not quite... but I did do a guest lecture at a local university today on the topic of "Agile in the real world." Ironically, the person who asked me to do so didn't even know (when she originally requested it) that I'd just written a book on that very topic.

It was an interesting experience and further validated my belief that I've lost the ability to get nervous when speaking in front of an audience. In that situation, I like to try to get my pulse up by thinking about how stressful it's supposed to be, but it just doesn't have any effect anymore. I guess that's a good thing, but it's also a bit weird. Friend and co-worker Danelle attributes it to me just not giving a shit, and she might be right.

The other pattern I noticed exhibiting itself in this morning's scenario was around "warming up an audience." Just as I've had happen elsewhere - including in the three Story Points workshops that I held in San Francisco late last year - it was a very cool reception at first, and it wasn't until about thirty minutes into the lecture that I started getting any laughs where I'd expected them. Clearly it takes strangers a while to adjust to my... unique... sense of humour, and I tend to forget that when I spend so much time around people who know me (as I usually do). At one point I felt like doing a little Rodney Dangerfield, "Tough crowd!" response, but fortunately I didn't give in to it. Like 19 year olds today would know who Dangerfield was anyway!