Why You Should Try Public Speaking as a Tech Professional

This is the story of my fight against shyness and insecurity, a journey that led me to boost my self-confidence and give a talk at the 20th SFI IT Academic Festival [1]. Hopefully, you can benefit from my experience!

Public speaking might sound intimidating at first, but it’s one of the most powerful ways to grow, both personally and professionally, especially in the tech world. But more on the advantages (and disadvantages) later; first, let’s see what happened.

My Crazy Idea

In late 2024, when the Call for Papers for SFI opened, a crazy idea struck me — maybe I should try sending an application?
I thought about it for a few days. After weighing the pros and cons, I decided — yes, I want to apply!

But then the real question came — what should my presentation be about?
Programming? Nah, too boring (and honestly, I’m not an expert).
AI? Too much hype already.
Practical data analysis? Nice... but what else?

This is a good place to mention my fascination with sports analytics (volleyball is my lover!), which is also related to my bachelor thesis, but I’ll save that story for another day. Sports analytics is a broad and fascinating field, so I decided to find something catchy.

The final step of my application was preparing a short draft for my talk, where I mentioned Moneyball, Soccermatics (the book), mathematics, animals, and tactics.
Apparently, it was good enough, so after some time, I got the invitation for an hour-long talk!

And that’s when reality hit me — I have to speak in public for an entire hour. Me, a shy introvert!

Preparation

After the initial panic attack, I started thinking about the structure of my presentation.
I had just finished reading Storytelling with Data and discovered the wonders of Canva, so I was ready to cook!

At first, I just wanted to create the presentation and use it as a skeleton for my speech.
Searching for ideas, reading about use cases, and exploring tools like xG (Expected Goals) was pure fun for me.

I decided to organize the presentation into four parts:

• History

• Beginning of Modern Data Analytics

• Football and Data

• Examples and Use Cases

Once the slides were ready, I tried to practice timing the whole thing to meet the 50-minute goal.

Spoiler — it didn’t go exactly as planned...

Still, this whole preparation process taught me a lot about clarity in visual presentations, Canva features, and of course, about the topic itself.
And that was just the preparation phase!

The Big Day

From the morning until the end of my talk (and the Q&A session), I was a bundle of nerves.
I arrived early to the festival, so I had time to attend the lecture before mine, chat with organizers and other speakers, and explore the venue (an enormous auditorium for more than 500 people!).

It was Saturday, so attendance was smaller, maybe just a few dozen people, which honestly worked in my favor as a first-timer.
I was so nervous that I sprinted through my material and finished about ten minutes early.
But that turned out great, because we had more time for a Q&A session, which was stressful yet amazing.
Getting deep, thoughtful questions from the audience meant a lot to me.

Share What You Know

I'm not an expert.
You don’t have to be an expert either.
Just take your passion, find a good place for your debut, and go for it!

Some ideas for a talk:

• A recent project you worked on.

• A challenge you overcame.

• A lesson you wish you had known earlier.

• An interesting discovery in data, code, or any field you love.

If you’ve learned something, someone else can benefit from it too.

Strengthen Your Understanding

One of the biggest benefits — explaining a concept forces you to truly understand it.
Even just preparing for a public talk helps you deepen your knowledge or refresh things you thought you already knew.

Build Your Network

Speaking at meetups, conferences, or online events puts you in front of people who share your interests.
It opens doors to collaborations, mentorships, and even job opportunities.

It’s obvious, but believe me, the people you meet can enrich you as a person in ways you don't expect.

Overcome Fear and Boost Confidence

The more you do it, the easier it gets.
Each talk improves your communication skills, boosts your confidence, and strengthens your stage presence — skills that help in everyday work life too.

If you can talk confidently to a dozen people, you can ace that job interview or code review without breaking a sweat!

Last but Not Least

Start small, maybe a local meetup or an internal tech talk and take it one step at a time.
You might be surprised by how much you actually enjoy it!

References

1. https://sfi.pl/en