What I learned

This past August, my friends Zack, Matty, Scott and I had the opportunity to speak at the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas for our work in hacking the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority’s fare cards. It was my first time speaking to not only crowd that big, but also to an audience that knew better than I did on a subject. I don’t mean hacking CharlieCards, but hacking in general. Within the domain of hacking, our project was quite niche.

Public Speaking is not something I am good at. Like, at all. It was a massive learning experience but I am so thankful I was able to do it. I had to practice speaking which I would not have done had I needed to. Practicing entailed setting up Audacity and repeating lines and then listening back. I think it’s pretty universally understood that nobody’s voice sounds as good as in their head. I cringed everytime I listened back.

What I learned doing that is that all “speaking well” really requires is knowledge of what you are going to say before you say it. In normal conversation you don’t think ahead of time what you’re going to say so it’s a pretty different way of talking. Another thing that I learned in regards to speaking to a crowd is that it is much easier when you’re actually up there. I’ve been more nervous speaking in front of a classroom for a presentation as a student than I did this. part of that I suspect, is that the idea of people judging you is a lot more immediate but I digress.