Last night I had the opportunity to present my Luggable PC, FreeNAS Box, and Portable External Monitor projects to the San Gabriel Valley Linux User's Group. Though the projects themselves have only minimal relation to Linux, the spirit of customization and project sharing fits well with the Linux open source ethos.

SGVTalkTitle

I hauled in all the latest versions of my projects. Plus all the earlier drafts and revisions that have yet to be disassembled and pitched. More visual aids is always better than less and they proved quite popular after the talk concluded and people came up to look over the projects up close.

Some of the audience found the topic engaging and stayed after the talk discussing aspects that didn't make it into the talk and offered ideas for future exploration. Some of those ideas were already on my to-do list and some are novel ideas I should explore.

A few people left early, whether they had other obligations or they got bored I might never know.

I don't have a lot of public speaking experience so this was a great opportunity for me to get some practice in a low-pressure environment in front of a like-minded crowd. At the moment I'm not planning to go work in a mega corporation again. I might not need good presentation skills in a small business, but if I want to get entrepreneurial and start my own business, I will definitely need presentation skills.

This was good practice, building up the public speaking skill one bit at a time.

Much like my design and fabrication skills.