Okay, I'm getting the thumbs up from the back of the room, which must mean it's time to start. So welcome everyone to my talk about becoming a conference speaker. I'll start by telling you just a little tiny bit about me. I have been in the technology industry for over 20 years, working mostly on open source projects from within companies like Intel, Puppet, and then now at VMware, I'm responsible for our open source community strategy within the open source program office. I'm also on the steering committee for the Linux Foundations to Do group. I'm a board member of Open UK. I'm a governing board member and maintainer for the Linux Foundations Chaos Metrics Project. I'm co-chair of the CNCF contributor strategy technical advisory group. And I recently finished a PhD from the University of Greenwich in London where I researched how people collaborate within the Linux kernel. So you can call me Dr. Dawn now. When I started being publicly visible by giving talks at conferences is when my career really started taking off. Public speaking is not something that came naturally to me. Early in my career, I was absolutely terrified of speaking up in front of other people, even just small internal company meetings. But I knew that it would be hard for me to be successful if I didn't get over those fears. So I just started accepting every possible internal opportunity to speak within the companies that I worked. I also took advantage of quite a few corporate training classes to learn more about how to present, how to give talks. But my career really started taking off in 2006 and 2007. And that's when I started blogging and speaking at events. I was super lucky to have a well-known colleague, Denise Cooper, who recruited me into several of my very first panels at conferences like OSCON, along with things like Lightning Talks. And Alyssa Camahort Page, so she was an early blog her fame. She was a regular reader of my blog. I didn't actually know her at the time. And she invited me onto a panel about open source software here at South by Southwest here in Austin. And that was my first presentation at a really big conference. But this gave me the confidence then to start doing my own talks at conferences. And I've done over 100 talks at a wide variety of different conferences. But also, around the same time, I also started organizing conferences and being on program committees, which gave me a whole new perspective on the talk selection process and why certain talks get accepted and others just don't make the cut, which I'll talk about more during the session. We'll start today by talking about the benefits and why we're here. The real work starts by selecting a topic and a conference. So we'll talk more about how to do that. I'll also talk about writing titles, abstracts, bios, and other supporting information to increase your chances of getting your talk accepted. I'll give you some insights into the talk selection process, along with a few tips for writing and preparing your talk. And at the end, we'll wrap it up with a few resources and some final thoughts. And I do have probably five or 10 minutes at the end for questions. If you have a burning question, feel free to interrupt me. And the slides are already posted on sketch. Look, there's Nithya. So there are a lot of benefits of speaking at conferences that people underestimate. First, most conferences allow speakers to attend for free, not all of them, but most of them. So it's way easier to convince your boss to let you attend if all you have to pay for is travel. And second, speakers usually get special access to other speakers, maybe some VIPs as well. You get to use the speaker lounge if they have one. And maybe even attend some VIP events for speakers, which gives you all sorts of opportunities to network with other experts. And third, speaking at events will help you become more well known as an expert within your field, which can help you gain credibility at your current job and make it easier to advance your career. By speaking at conferences, I've been able to travel the world and meet all kinds of really, really interesting people. And now I can travel the globe and meet up with friends that I've met at conferences. And conference speaking has been amazing for my career, but it's also just been a really positive personal experience for me. But speaking at conferences doesn't just benefit us as individuals, it also has a lot of benefits for your employer. Speaking at industry conferences provides visibility for your employer and showcases your expertise and your technologies. So in my case, our customers, ecosystem partners, peers, and potential future employees see that VMware has smart and talented people who are respected for their expertise. And there's a lot of visibility that comes from conference talks. In the months and weeks leading up to an event, you'll typically see posts from the event on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites to promote the event, but also sometimes even just to promote individual talks. And your company will often promote your talks on their social channels to make sure that you're getting visibility for the talks that your employees are giving. And many talks are also recorded and posted online, which gives you an opportunity to gain additional visibility for those talks even after the event. It's also a great recruiting tool. Potential candidates see us giving presentations and they get excited about the work that we're doing, which can make them want to work with us. And the next time they're looking for a new role, it'll be great if they remember your talk and think about applying to work at your company. It's important also to keep in mind that you are representing your employer when speaking at conferences. And what you say will reflect positively or negatively on your employer. So be professional and be kind when interacting with other people at events. Now, different companies have different processes for getting approval to speak. And even within a single company, the process probably varies depending on your business unit, your team, your experience, the topic you want to talk about, timing, and lots of other things. So the best place to start is always by talking to your manager. And your manager should be able to help you understand the processes you'll need to follow, and your manager will need to provide approval. It is very important to get your manager's approval and feedback before submitting your talk proposal to a conference. It can be super disruptive for conference organizers when someone has a talk accepted that they don't actually have the permission to deliver. Because then the conference organizers need to replace a speaker. And it just tends to reflect poorly both on the individual and also on your employer. So get approval from your manager to avoid getting yourself in this situation. Okay, let's dive in to talk about selecting a topic and the right conference for your topic. Now the first step in writing a proposal is indeed to come up with a topic. And this is the first place where imposter syndrome can get in the way of your success. Coming up with a topic is hard for a lot of people. Because they feel like they need to be the expert in a technology or know absolutely everything about a topic before submitting a talk. But this just is not the case. You only need to know enough to provide useful content for people who aren't as experienced as you are. At most conferences, the audience probably has more people who are just getting started and are eager to learn. In particular, attendance at sessions tends to be skewed towards new people because they came to the conference to learn something. A good way to find a topic is to think about why people come to you and ask for help. Or think of the technologies that you love to work with and talk about those. Many conferences, including this one, are also filled with talks about processes, culture, community, management, and many other topics that loads of people can talk about. So think of something you've done that you love doing or know a lot about and talk about that. My biggest caution about selecting a topic is that you should be careful not to propose a topic that is really a product pitch. Most conference organizers will reject any talk that even seems like maybe you're trying to sell something or pitch a vendor's technology. So this can be a really fine line to walk for those of us working at a software vendor, like VMware in my case. If you work for a software vendor and propose a talk related in any way to what your company sells, even sometimes if it's an open source project that's related to what you sell as a company, it's less likely to be accepted. Conference organizers tend to be very skeptical about talks from vendors and it's really hard to get some of these talks accepted. But keep in mind there are loads of other ways to promote your company and products at conferences with various types of sponsorships. And sometimes those sponsorships even come with sponsored talks. But even for those sponsored talks, I would encourage you to find a creative way to talk about your technologies that doesn't seem like a product pitch. The reality is that pity talks are declined for a reason. People don't like them. People do like talks that are compelling and interesting. So when selecting a topic, think about how you can make your talk unique. The topic itself doesn't necessarily need to be unique. But it can help to find ways to make your approach to the topic unique and innovative. You can do this by bringing your unique perspective to the topic. The topic should also be important and relevant for the conference and their audience. And it should be focused enough that you can tell a compelling story within the time available for your talk. And I'll talk more about some of these areas when we get to the section about writing your abstract. Before we talk about picking a conference for your topic, let's briefly talk about calls for proposals or CFPs. The most common way to get your talk into a conference, including conferences like this one, is by submitting a proposal into the CFP for that event. The catch is that CFPs are only open for a short period of time, maybe a month or two. And the CFPs close usually many months before the conference. So this requires really careful planning in advance if you want to speak at an event. So in August or September of every year, I put together a document listing the conferences that I want to attend next year. And once a month, I have a reminder on my to-do list to look to see which ones have announced their CFP deadlines. And the ones with open CFPs go on my to-do list so that I don't miss the deadline to submit. And this is really, really important because if you miss the deadline, you're just not going to be able to speak at that event. It's also important to remember that every CFP is just a little bit different. They may require different information, but they'll have slightly different word limits for things like abstracts. So you should really carefully read the CFP instructions for proposing a talk to make sure that you follow the process and include all of the required information. Once you have a topic, you need to find the right conference. Spend some time researching conferences and looking at open calls for proposals. You'll want to make sure that you submit a talk that's relevant and likely to be accepted at this particular conference. So please, please don't just blast your proposal out to any conference with an open CFP. Find a couple of conferences that have had similar talks in the past and have the audience that you think would be interested in your topic. And then tailor your submission to that event. For each conference, review the titles, abstracts and bios for talks that they've accepted in previous years for their conferences. And you can use these previous talks to get a feel for the types of talks that are accepted. The length, the amount of detail in the abstracts and the types of speakers that they've had in the past. And keep this in mind when writing your proposal and tailor your title, your abstract, and your speaker bio to that specific conference. You can also do this the other way around by finding a conference that you want to attend and then picking a topic. Which to be honest, that's how I do it. I pick the conferences I want to go to and then I find a topic that they might like. But again, looking at the CFPs for past events can be a really good way to get ideas for a topic that might be a good fit for a conference that you want to go to anyways. If you're new to conference speaking, local meetups are almost always trying desperately to find talks for upcoming events. And they can be a really nice friendly place to do your first talk. Having a presentation in front of a smaller audience, especially a local one where maybe you can get some friends or colleagues to attend can really take the pressure off while you can still get some practice. And these local events are also a great place to try out new material before taking it to a bigger event. And there are loads of very friendly regional open source events that are smaller than this one but bigger than a local meetup. Things like Segal in the Pacific Northwest, Texas Linux Fest, Ohio Linux Fest, Scale in Southern California are all good starter events. Writing the title and abstract is probably the most important part of preparing your submission.  This is not a place to downplay your topic or be mysterious. You'll want your topic to shine and you need to be really clear about why this is an important topic for this particular event. Your abstract should be clear, descriptive and detailed. It needs to give the organizers enough detail to understand what you plan to cover. And since it often becomes part of the conference guide, it should provide a clear description for potential attendees. And the abstract should be long enough to describe your talk, but not so long that organizers feel like it's a burden to read it. So keep it as concise as possible. But the scope also needs to be realistic. Find out about how long the conference session is likely to be, and make sure that you think about how much you can reasonably cover within that time frame while still leaving room for questions. And use the abstract to list or describe the key points that you want to make during your talk, while also being clear about why the talk is important and what people will learn if they attend. Keep in mind also that you don't need to write the presentation until the proposal gets accepted. And I would actually, I think, discourage you from writing the presentation before the talk gets accepted. You run the risk of spending time on a topic that just isn't going to be interesting to conference organizers for whatever reason. And sometimes organizers, and I've done this, will respond back with specific requests to make slight changes to the topic. So you want to have that flexibility to incorporate feedback. Now, I actually have a bit of a formula that I use when writing my abstracts. The level of detail varies by topic and conference. But if you look at my talks at past conferences, including this one, most of my abstracts look something like this. So I start with a paragraph that tries to draw in the audience and generate some interest by focusing on why the topic is important and relevant to the audience. Now, the goal with this first paragraph is to help attendees understand why they should attend my talk and make sure that the program selection committee knows why my talk is important and relevant for their audience. And then the next section usually includes three to five bullet points with details about what I plan to include in my talk. This helps attendees and the selection committee understand exactly what I plan to talk about. I also try to end my abstracts with a summary of what the audience can expect to learn. Now, this is definitely not the only way to write an abstract, but it has worked pretty well for me in the past. So I thought it might help people who are new to writing talk proposals. Titles for talks are tricky. You want a title that sounds interesting enough to stand out, but it also has to accurately describe your topic. And it should do all of this in maybe three to seven words. Now, I have been super guilty of writing really, really long titles. And usually, this just makes it hard for me to tell people what my talk is, because what's your talk? Oh, and then I've got 15 words of description of my talk title, which just makes it really hard for me to talk about my talk. And from a practical perspective, long titles can be hard to fit up conference programs. So I've been actively working on shortening my talk titles. Also try to avoid buzzwords in your talk titles. Those of us who regularly select talks for conferences can get a bit jaded and tired of the same buzzwords that make every single talk and every single title sound exactly the same. And keep in mind that many people will also decide to come to your talk based primarily on the title because that's what shows up first in most conference programs. And you don't want people to be disappointed if your title doesn't match the content in your presentation. A lot of people really don't understand how critical it is that you have a well-written bio to go along with your proposal. And this is another area where imposter syndrome can get in the way. You should use your bio as a place to brag about yourself and help the organizers and attendees see that you have the expertise to give this talk. This is not a place to be modest or downplay your experience. Your speaker bio is a critical part of the acceptance process. I actually tend to read the bio before I read the abstract when I'm on selection committees. And you should customize it for different types of talks or conferences to emphasize your experience in the particular topic or technology that you're planning on talking about. Because conference organizers and selection committees want to know that you have expertise that's relevant to your topic. And your bio is probably the only opportunity to demonstrate why they should select you to speak about a topic. And you might want to cut some less relevant information from your bio to give you room to be specific about the expertise you have in the topic. But like with the abstract, your bio should be short and concise. This is not a dissertation. And also remember that this is not a time for modesty. You will need to brag about your accomplishments and make sure that your bio puts your expertise in the spotlight. Many CFPs ask for links to supporting materials like presentations, blog posts, videos of previous talks.  If members of the selection committee haven't seen you talk before, this is what they use to learn more about whether you have the expertise and the presentation skills to give the talk. If you don't have something ready to share, that's fine. You can always write a blog post on a related topic and contribute it to one of the many blogs who accept guest content, so opensource.com is a good one. Or one of your company's external blogs. The people that run your blogs would probably be happy to have a blog post from you. If you need a video, you can prepare a five minute presentation. Record it. Put it up on YouTube. And for supporting material, I do recommend focusing on quality over quantity by using your best examples, not necessarily everything you've ever done. This is the Here Be Dragons section of the talk to provide a few warnings about what not to do based on my experience on program selection committees. A lot of people don't want to give away the point of the talk in the abstract. Or maybe they want some mystery or some big reveal. And in my experience, this is a mistake. When I'm selecting talks, I need enough detail to know if it's going to be a fit for my event. And I need to make sure that it isn't going to be too similar to some of the other talks that I'm going to accept. And the only way to make these decisions is by having a detailed abstract. And honestly, I have often rejected talks simply because the abstract was just too short or lacking enough details to make a decision about the talk. When I see poorly written abstracts or bios that look like maybe they were thrown together at the very last minute without any proofreading, I worry that the presentation will be of similar quality. If someone doesn't take the time to proofread their proposal, what will their presentation look like? And as I mentioned before, I present at loads of conferences, but I still try to make sure that someone else reads my proposal before I submit it. Often Suzanne here in this front row. And I've had great feedback and suggestions from friends, from colleagues, from Suzanne that's really helped me make my submission stronger than they would have been if I'd gone it alone. It's also important to remember that your talk is competing with a whole bunch of other talks. And proposals are declined for loads of reasons. Yours may have been a great proposal, but maybe they had another very, very similar proposal that was accepted instead. Or maybe your talk wouldn't have been a good fit for this conference, but would be a great talk at a different event. And I know it's easy to get discouraged when your talks are declined, but even very popular speakers don't get their talks accepted at every event. I don't get my talks accepted at every event. It's disappointing, but we live with it.  I know that some people like to write their talks on the plane on the way to the conference, but I am not one of those people. And it's not something I'd recommend, especially if you're new to speaking. But if I'm preparing a brand new talk that I've never given before, I will seriously usually start working on it at least a month in advance. And this gives you plenty of time to think about what you want to say. And if you run into a bit of writer's block, which we all do, you have plenty of time just to put it aside for a few days or a week and then come back to it when you're fresh. I also find that when I'm working on other things, I'll get ideas for what I've forgotten to add to the talk. So starting early just gives you plenty of time to think about additional material or make improvements. By starting early, you'll have plenty of time to figure out what you want to say and then organize your talk. If you used something like my abstract formula, those key bullet points are likely to be the main sections for your talk. And in general, most people would recommend organizing your talk before starting to create your slides, using an outline of some sort. I have to admit that I do organize my talks using my presentation software keynote in this case, but I don't start right in trying to create detailed slides from top to bottom. I create placeholder slides with just titles and maybe a couple of notes. And then I can rearrange them and look at it and make sure I've got logical groupings. And then I start building in the details. I also recommend having plenty of speaker notes, especially when you're taking time and preparing early. It is really easy to forget the key points that you wanted to make on a slide.  And you don't want to get nervous and forget what you wanted to say. And I find that having speaker notes just makes me a lot less nervous because I know that they're there when I need them. And do not worry about over-rehearsing. I see way more people come into talks who are under-prepared rather than over-prepared. I practice my talks out loud just like I plan to give the talk. And I use these as dry runs for the actual presentation. And this helps cut down on the nerves because you know what you're going to say and how long it will take to say it. Now this is why, and I can't stress this enough, it is really, really important to practice by actually speaking out loud. Because if you just think the words rather than saying them out loud, that is almost always faster because we all think faster than we speak. And if you base your timing on this, you are going to run out of time when you do the real thing. It can also help to do a practice run with teammates or friends to get feedback. And they're likely to be interested in your topic anyway. So it's a win for everyone. You can record your talk and watch the video later. It's really painful to watch yourself present, videos of yourself presenting, but I almost always see something that I can improve when I do it.  Who knows? But it's also really important to speak slowly during presentations. Many of us, myself included, we tend to talk faster when we're nervous or excited. It's important to remember that we need to slow down and pause between topics to give the audience a bit of time to process what we're saying. And this might feel uncomfortable at first since pauses will almost always seem longer to you than to your audience. But again, this comes with practice. Practicing your talk out loud while speaking slowly and inserting pauses will help you get used to the slower speaking cadence before you get out in front of the audience. You'll also want to promote your talk both before and after you give it. You can talk about it on your favorite social media sites, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever your favorite is. You can do that before the talk to encourage people to attend and then after the talk with links to your slides and maybe video the recordings were published. And you should do the same via your internal channels like Slack or various other internal company updates. I also strongly recommend reaching out to your marketing folks because they will almost always, Suzanne will second that, they are happy to find ways to provide even more visibility for your talk. I also keep a list of every public talk I give on my website, which frankly helps me remember which talks I've done at which event. But more importantly, it gives me a single place that I can use to promote my talks. And it becomes kind of a speaking resume. And if you don't have a website, you can keep them in a Google Doc or any other format that you can easily share with other people. Put them in a GitHub repo. As a reminder, you are representing your employer when you speak at a conference. So they probably want you to be as prepared as possible. In addition to the tips I just talked about, you probably have other company resources to help you prepare. There might be training from PR to help you answer questions or avoid disclosing something that you shouldn't. There might also be options for training on public speaking, writing presentations and related topics. And finally, as I mentioned earlier, doing a practice presentation in front of your colleagues is a really great way to get feedback in a safe space so that you can improve your talk before you present it to a broader audience. And hopefully you work with a lot of fun, smart people. So don't hesitate to get their feedback and advice. Before I wrap up this talk, let me leave you with just a few resources that you might find useful. I wrote a two-part blog post series that was based on this presentation. So it covers most of the topics from the presentation, if you want to refresher or share it with your colleagues and friends. A couple of people who work with me in the VMware open source program office and who are on the open source summit program committee wrote a great article about how to craft a better talk proposal that's more likely to be accepted. So that's another great resource. And I also found, someone pointed me to a nice article on D-Zone about how to become a conference speaker and why you should. So that's another good read. Let me leave you with just a few final thoughts. I talked about imposter syndrome in a few places during this talk. It's easy to default to doubting your abilities and feeling like you just don't know enough to give a talk at a conference, but that's just not true. We all have expertise and knowledge that we can share with people who are just getting started. You do not need to be the world's leading expert to give a presentation on a topic. You just need to know a few things that can help other people learn something. And by bringing your authentic voice and your unique perspective to a topic, people will walk away from your talk with new insights that they wouldn't get from another speaker. With that, thank you for coming to my talk and we can open it up for questions. Questions. So the question was, are there any sensitive topics that you should check with your employer before you present? Yes, absolutely. And those would depend a lot on your employer and what you do. But this is one of the reasons why I think it's really important to get feedback from your manager on your proposal. Because usually your manager can help you flag anything that might be an issue so that you make sure that you write a proposal on a topic that you're going to be able to fully cover and not worry about disclosing anything that you shouldn't. So it's a fine line to walk and you, as you give presentations, if you're talking about anything that's even slightly sensitive, that will take some time to develop. And again, this is why it's also really important especially if you're talking about a sensitive topic to present it in front of your colleagues, including your manager. So that if you say anything that you shouldn't, they can tell you that before you get into the real thing at the conference. Other questions. Yes. That was an excellent question. The question was, now that we're in this hybrid format, how do you provide an equally good experience for the in-person audience and for the virtual audience? And I think that that's something that's, it's pretty hard and it depends a lot actually on the conference. So it depends a lot on like the software that they're using and how things are set up. So the way things are set up here, I really don't have any way of interacting with the virtual audience. So I don't see their questions. I don't see their faces. And so it's a lot harder to make that experience good for them. And on the other side, you also have people presenting remotely. And that's another challenge. During the pandemic, I completely reworked like my presentation set up so that I had my speaker notes on the big screen right below my camera. So then when I was giving virtual presentation, I could glance at my speaker notes and still make good eye contact with the virtual audience. So I think it's up to, in a lot of cases, it's kind of up to the conference organizers to help make that hybrid experience a good one. And it's a hard problem that I don't know that we've solved for sure. It's a good question. Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent question. The first, the question was, what's the, so this is a talk about imposter syndrome. What was the first talk that I ever gave and how did I kind of get over imposter syndrome to give that talk? Yeah, so for me, it was starting really small. So Denise Cooper, I think my first talk was probably I think it was a panel on being a woman in open source. And this was probably 2006 or so. And she basically encouraged me and kind of got me up there. And panels are a little bit easier because if there's four or five people, if you don't have a good answer to something, that's probably fine because one of the other panelists can answer it. So she kind of walked me through that process, which did give me more of the confidence to do that. And then I think probably the second one that I did was a lightning talk. And I don't even remember what I talked about, but it was just like a five minute presentation. And it was a whole, it was in a room with a whole bunch of other five minute presentations. So that was also kind of a lower, lower barrier to entry. But I would say, one of the things that, and this is something that I've tried to do off and on as well throughout my career is that being an experienced speaker, doing co-presentations with people who maybe aren't as experienced as I am, because being a co-presenter takes a lot of the pressure off because there's always someone there to support you and help you and someone with you on stage. So I think that that is also a really great way to overcome imposter syndrome because in that way it's kind of like a panel and that you've got some support right there. So I would encourage you if you wanna do a talk, like recruit a colleague that maybe has done some toxic conferences and kind of pair up with them. I think that's a good way to get started. I did this with somebody who was brand new in her career and we started with like, she did one slide and an internal presentation and then it was like a quarter of the presentation and then half the presentation and then it was a couple of slides at our developer conference externally and we kind of built on it from there. Other questions? Elizabeth and then the one behind you after that. Yes, so the question was that it's really hard giving presentations because you don't know what people are gonna ask and you might not know the answer to questions. So how do you leave room for questions and be comfortable with not knowing the answer to questions? And so I would say that I have two strategies to answering questions that I don't know the answer to. One is if I have an answer that's slightly related that I think might actually be helpful, like it's not a diversion, but it's like I know this other thing that I think might help in this situation, I will give that answer and be upfront about the fact that you know, this isn't quite what you ask, but this might also be helpful. And in some cases, I just say, I really just don't know the answer to that. I did that in my Ospo Help or Hinder talk. There was one question, I don't remember what it was, but it was something related to compliance or licensing, which is not my jam. And so I was just like, yeah, I don't know. But yeah, you get comfortable with saying I don't know because none of us know the answer to everything. Even like the experts in anything, they never know the answer to every single question. Okay, in the back. Oh, okay, perfect. All right, done. We have three minutes. Any other questions? Yes. Yeah, so the question is, so I have a PhD, so I probably also presented at academic conferences and what's the difference between presenting at these and presenting at academic conferences? And honestly, it felt completely different to me. So I, but I had kind of a unique perspective, right? I had spent almost 20 years, well probably, yeah, at least 20 years in the industry before I went back to get my PhD. So I'd already given loads of talks at big tech conferences and then I went to get my PhD and I started presenting at academic conferences. And it is a whole different style of presenting, right? So like here, I talk about in your abstract, you really need to kind of get to the point and tell me what you're gonna talk about. And in academic conferences, it's a lot of leading up to that final conclusion. So you don't talk about why, what the results are right away. You get to it and then there are a million words on all the slides and then there's things that people can't read because you've got, I don't know, mathematical models and statistical models and things. So it's a very different, it's a very different environment and the questions are very different because academics, sorry, to the academics in the room, probably some of you, some of them, not all of them, some of them just like to ask really difficult questions to show how smart they are to the other people in the audience and it's just kind of an academic thing. So here, all of your questions have been super friendly. It's like, how do I do that? Can you give me some advice? And it's not like, well, I don't know why you picked that variable and there's probably this other thing and did you consider these 10 things that are my favorite pet things that actually don't apply to your thing, but I'm gonna say them anyways. So you don't get that. So I would say it's just night and day. I like these better. I could probably do one more quick question because I haven't gotten the stop sign. Go for it. Yeah, so the question is, how do you handle questions that you get in the middle of your talk that are likely to make you need to rush through things later? And I don't have any really good strategies for that. I would say that what I generally do is on the fly, I will kind of shorten what I say about things based on where I'm seeing the interest if there were questions in the middle. And maybe I'll shorten it for things we already talked about. I will also, if people are asking me questions that I know are covered later in the slides, I'll be like, hey, we're gonna cover that. So if we don't cover that, ask again at the end. And so I do try to divert some of the questions. And if it's going on too long, I'll be like, hey, I've got more stuff to get through. Let's stop the questions for now and come back to them at the end if we have time. And then, thank you. And then the other thing that you can do is, if you don't want to answer questions in the middle of your talk, I think that's also fine. So if people are asking questions, you can say, hey, I'd rather just get through everything and I've got time at the end for questions. So I would say do whatever feels most comfortable for you because it really is kind of an individual thing. Okay, I got to stop like a half a minute ago, so I'm done, but I'll be around all day, so you can ask me questions later.


We had a very good session out of the week. We're going to thank all of you for coming to the party. Take somebody else's kids. We happened to run into Mrs. Reagan. So he asked her if I really wanted peace. And she said yes. So every night, why don't you whisper peace in this evening? And then we had to move on. And as we started to leave, I reached up and whispered peace. Wonderful. It was a small town with a meeting in it. But the one that talks the most we just call a mortgage.


I have a belief that we'll respond the right way, that we have a bunch of men in that locker room who care for each other and want to win. You know, we find out what type of team we are. We use type of adversity, especially to start the year. I'm going to make sure I come into the building tomorrow with a lot of energy, a lot of juice, a lot of positive energy. Be critical of yourself. Be loud and sweet each and every day. We'll find a way to make the corrections. Come to practice this week, prepare and go out to Seattle and win one game. Welcome to Titans Blitz. I'm Lance Smith, live here at Nissan Stadium. Thank you so much for joining us. I am by myself, which is kind of strange. For years past, this is our sixth season on the show. I've always been joined by my main man, the one and only Eddie George, who we all know in case you've been living under rock, is the head coach of the TSU football team. So look, the guy's busy. And you know, we can't really, we can't fill a seat like Eddie's because Eddie George, well, I mean, that guy's like the heart and soul of this franchise. Let's do it. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. See, that sound goes everywhere in this town. I guarantee you can hear it right now. He's waking up somewhere from a nap just because he did that. We love you, Eddie. We wish you the best in all your endeavors outside the Titans Blitz and outside the stadium. And we hope you do extremely well with TSU, and I'm sure you will. And the seat, by the way, is always yours. And so we'll see you again sometime. But this season, well, we're going to have a revolving door of people, people you know, and maybe some people you're just getting to know. So still the same Titans Blitz. We're going to have a little fun with it. But joining us and filling this seat tonight is a guy that, well, many of you heard Sunday at the stadium. In fact, this guy, well, he worked really hard to get where he's at. And, well, we've got a video of how he got this particular job. Check this out. By the way, it's okay for him to cry as long as it's a victory cry. Eighth environment. This place rocks. Matt Rogers. Oh, so good to see you. It's good to see you, man. All right, so dude, you're here. The game was Sunday. We'll talk about the game in a minute.  So now you're here. I mean, like, I got to know you sitting out here. Yep. So how you feeling? I'm feeling great. It's still impossible for me to not watch that and get choked up. I tried to lose a little weight since that. I hope it's working out, but, you know, You look good, sir. Okay, good. You look good. No, but it's awesome. Like, you know, I was a fan first. My first football team when I was seven years old and I played Pop Warner was the Oilers. And that's, you know, being on the West Coast, that's how I became an Oiler fan. Yeah. So when they came to Tennessee, I followed them as a Titan. So then when I came to Tennessee, I was a season ticket holder and I've been at the Blitz a handful of times and met you, which, by the way, you were always so cool to me and my kids. And I appreciate that. Aw, man. Is Lance not great or what? Like, seriously. I'll pay you later. No, seriously. Like, it's awesome.  Like, I don't take it for granted. Well, dude, it's an honor to have you here.  We heard you at your first regular season game on Sunday. You killed it. Love having your voice in the stadium. And since you are a fan and you know the game and love the game like we do, let's get to this game that was. And let's do some hot takes with Matt right here and talk about our week one game against the Arizona Cardinals. Some of you are trying to forget it already and I don't know why. Perhaps it's the final score. Let it go. Moving on. Let's talk about the positives. First of all, as a fan, as we're fans, as you guys know, look, people back in the stadium, right? Yes. That environment from the get go was hot. How did you feel in that moment? I mean, just soaking it up and seeing us back. And that was especially with the beautiful 9-11 tribute that we had. It felt unbelievable. I gotta tell you, there was a moment. It was about five minutes before I made my very first announcement. And my boss, David's like, OK, five minutes. I'm going to go do something. And I was by myself, which is kind of odd. And dude, I got this moment where I got choked up. And I started crying. I had to do one of those things.  I got to get ready. Because I'm looking out and I'm like, look at where I'm at. Life can change like that. Like in a second, I went from out there to in here. And I'm like, look at this. And there's 65,000 people going crazy. And the flags are out there. And it's the day after 9-11. And the anthem was something I've never seen before. And I lost it on the anthem. No, look, the moment was there. I did, too. That anthem killed me.  And once it got started, though, it's so funny how football works. We've been out for so long dealing with COVID all last year. And now we have people back in the house and this game is being played. And before you know it, we're down early, quick. And we're watching it unfold. And it's tough. But I got to say, I'm still looking at the splashes because you let this stuff go. Vrable wants to let this stuff go. But I want to focus on, I mean, how excited we go. And AJ Brown gets hot in the game. And I know we're down, but with this whole time, we are the Titans and we always come back from these things. You know there's always a chance. Look at this guy. And he's playing on the field with Julio, who did not go off as we would want him to. But it's there, right? And what a lot of people forget.  I mean, we have eyes. We saw what happened. But they say football is a game of inches. But it's also a game of opportunities like this. Just, you know, play what ifs for me for 30 seconds. What if we would have made the extra point? What if we would have made the field go before half? Right. Then we're down 24-10 at half. Right. Bayard gets the pick. We score. Now we're only down 24-17. It changes the whole game. And then what if Dupree would have sacked Murray right before that completion would change the game. Yeah. Now the sudden we're getting the ball back 24-17. Like, it's a different game. And that's what people don't talk about. So yeah, I know the score didn't show, but we were right there. We were right there. And we will be right there all season. I know it because we have the talent. We have the team. Ladies and gentlemen, our new PA, Matt Rogers. Right here. We'll see you later on in the season. We'll be hearing from you. I'll see you later in the show. There were memorable moments. And right now we're going to go to break. We got more Titans Blitz on the other side. But right now here are some Nissan memorable moments. Stick around. We'll be right back. Murray in the shot good. Takes the snap. Has time. Now feeling some pressure. Blush to his left. Throws back shoulder. Intercepted fire. 45-40. Fire to the 35. Fired is going to be taken down by Williamson Edmunds. Tana Hill in the gun. Looking, throwing in the end zone for Brown. Touchdown. That was really good, guys. Like, in unison. Welcome back to the Titans Blitz. I'm Lance Smith. Still introducing you to a relatively new cast of characters here at the Titans family. My next guest, well, he went viral, big time viral. And it sort of really launched his career. You might remember this clip right here of him having a conversation with his son. Check this out. Mr. Grant finale of this. The finalist? Yeah, that's the last one. The finalist? The finalist. That's what I was wondering. I don't know what they're going to do next season, because they did some stuff this time. The finalist? Exactly what I was thinking. The finalist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Don't break that again. You know what I'm saying? Don't do the same stuff. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I love that clip so much. Ladies and gentlemen, that is DJ Pryor. This is DJ Pryor right here.  Oh, you're the dad. Right. Oh, no, no. So, so DJ is here. You're from Clarksville? Yeah. Well, originally from Virginia. Yeah. You know, Clarksville. Yeah. I've been doing this for a while. That thing launched you, man. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. I've been doing stand-up actually now. This is my 18th year of doing stand-up comedy. I started when I was... You were two? Yeah. 14, 15, yeah. And now things... It took my son to do what I've been trying to do for 18 years. Oh, is there some, like, bitterness there? Yeah, a little bit. Is he always looking for a cut? Yeah, because he's always, like, reminding me that he's the star and I don't really like that, you know, yeah. That's not cool. Well, another reason you guys might know DJ Pryor here, have you guys seen the, what do you call it, work video? Yeah, the work video. The new Titans image video. Yes. I mean, DJ is all over that thing. There he is right there. Woo! Love this clip. Love it. They got going places. Yes. He's going places. So you get tapped to do this thing. Right. And instantly it's like, man, we gotta have you. You gotta have, yeah. So how much film is that to shoot? That was great, man. We shot that in a total of, I think, four days. And it was great. When it came to me about it, they said we want you to be you and just have a good time. And anytime I get an excuse to be myself and have fun, I'm going to do it. Yeah. So it was great. It was great. And then to represent such an amazing franchise, like the Titans, that's dope. That's the honor. So that was great. No, it is. Well, it's funny because, you know, not only that, so DJ told us something that really blew our minds. You had never been to a professional football game. Never. Ever. Never. And it was so much fun. It was so much fun. I can't, I can't describe the emotion and the feeling. I was like a little kid. I was like everything. I was like, dude. He's really excited. So basically, basically we wanted to capture that and we did and we're going to make him do it all year now. Here's DJ Pryor and all tightened up. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this. I do love your head, Hit smoking. First game. DJ, what did it blow your mind the massive experience? It was great man. I just like I said, the video doesn't even tell the half of the story. There was one time we almost got kicked out. They didn't capture that. We almost got kicked out But it was great. It was great. We didn't get kicked out. We loved it. It happens to me every game. Right. Yeah. No, I completely get that. We're going to have DJ all over the stadium for every home game this season, so if you see this guy, give him the business. We'll be seeing you more during the season. All right. DJ, thank you so much. You guys have got more Titan splits. And it's time for what is sure to be everyone's favorite segment on any TV show, the Titans trivia gauntlet. Let's hear it. We spent a lot of money on that. Okay. Here's how it works. Got a trivia game here being played between Mike from Nashville and Chris from Jolton. Chris, how are you doing? I like that jersey. Thanks, sir. Doing pretty good. I think the kid's called the drip. The drip? Or drip. A drip. I'm dripping all day. Something like that. You're looking pretty swag too. My kids, this is the way they talk to me. Mike, and you're from Nashville? Yes, sir. Born and raised, baby. Born and raised. Okay. And you guys are just lifelong Titans fans, I think. Up for grabs tonight. A signed mini helmet. I won't tell you by who until the end of the game so it doesn't get vicious out here.  Awesome. Let's do it. Mike, you might have a chance to steal. Here we go. Play along at home if you want to. You get no prizes, but you can brag to somebody. Question number one, Chris, which former Titans player was popularly known as the freak? I will make fun of you if you get this wrong, by the way. The Javon Curse, Eddie George, Steve McNair, or Kyle Vandenbosch. That would be Javon Curse. That would be Javon Curse. Of course it would. So one point to you, sir. Very good. Mike, do you see how we play this game? Yours might not be so easy. Next question. Question number two. What was Mike Vrabel's first season as Titan's head coach? Was that 2016, 2017, 2018, or 2019? Go with 2017. 2017 is incorrect. That's the buzzer sound. You have a chance to steal, Chris. That would be, I'm going to say, 2016. 2016 is also incorrect. Wow. Missed out when the correct answer is 2018. It's 2018. But he feels like he's been here for a while, right? Yeah. He's Uncle Mike. We know the guy. All right. Next question. Moving on. Mike, we're going to go to you right here. Actually, Chris. Okay. Still you, isn't it? Who has the most career of receiving yards in franchise Titan's era? Frank Wiecek. Derek Mason. AJ Brown. Or Kevin Dyson. That would be Derek Mason. Mike, you know how many? No. That's a really tough question. That is correct. Correct. It's actually 6,114 yards as a Titans Euler. Okay. Here we go. Next question for you, Mike. In which Tennessee town was Titans general manager John Robinson raised? He's a Tennessee guy. Multiple choice. Union City. Columbia, Tennessee. Clarksville. Or Johnson City? Ooh. I want to say Johnson City. You want to say Johnson City? You want to say Johnson City? Now let's go with Union City. You want to say Union City? What did your heart say? Johnson City.  Johnson City. What should it be listened to? Apparently not that. Chris, what do you say? I will say Union City. Union City is the correct answer. We are going to meet last question now. It is a bonus question. Let's see if you can get on the board here. You'll both have a chance to answer it. Here you go. How wide is a standard NFL crossbar? Is it 10 feet? 18 feet. 6 inches. 24 feet. 8 inches. Or 36 feet. You both get a chance to answer. Mike, go first. I want to go with... 18-6. 18-6. And Chris, what do you say? I guess I'm going with 24. You are going to go with 24-8. That's two points to my man Mike right here. But that is the final score of the game. But that gives Chris 3. Mike 2. Congratulations, Chris. You are the winner and it is signed by none other than Jeffrey Simmons. The crowd is still pumped. The season is underway. Something very cool for a great cause is happening here at Nissan Stadium tomorrow night. So make sure you go to NissanStadium.com to get tickets to Waverly Central playing White House, high school game. And you get these tickets for free. So come out and support these schools, especially the Waverly Tigers. Of course, Waverly, Devastated by the Flash Flood, their stadium, everything ruined and the Titans or Nissan Stadium is hosting the event here. It's very cool.  Dream come true. Yeah. So tomorrow night, NissanStadium.com for tickets, 7 p.m. tomorrow night. Come, it's free. It's a great night. Matt Rodgers, good to have you back, our in-state announcement.  A hundred percent. I do it before. Yeah. You've been grown. No, I just I'm still married. So it's working out. Real quick, we got to go in, like, 30 seconds. Look, man, the season's underway. I'm pumped. I know you are. Got a game in Seattle. It's tough, right? Very tough. But we've seen it already. I mean, it's Russell Wilson. And I mean, it's like it's Colin Murray, Oliver again. Yes, Titans do very well in the hard games and somehow sometimes the easy ones slip away, but I feel confident. I really do. I'm not just We are back. How's it feel, huh? Yeah!


Welcome to the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Project. So every day of this month, at least 30 days of this month, we are gonna create a little painting a day and we're gonna see what happens. I'm gonna experiment mostly with watercolor and gouache and let's get to painting and I will see you at the end. Hey guys, we are here for painting number 12 of our 30 Paintings in 30 Days series. So let's get started. Okay, I've got the usual suspects at this point if you've been watching the videos from episode one, then you would know I've got a inspiration picture book over that way. I take photos and clip photos of things. These are mostly photos. I think these are all photos I took and then I matched them up onto a page into this journal with some paint swatches I think are inspired by the photos and then I kind of made my own like palette inspiration. So I've been using my books to create these little painting studies that we're doing for the 30 Paintings in 30 Days series. Let's see if I can get that to stand up. It doesn't wanna stand up. Let's see. There we go. I also have a lot of watercolor palettes and I've pulled out one. This is my floral and cobalt palette with a lot of blues as you can see. This is a variety of paint brands including Jane Davenport, PBO, Holbein, Quar, Van Gogh, Daniel Smith. Yeah. A very bright palette with some nice earthy grounded colors in it. So we're gonna use that. I've got a little paint palette here. I've got some brushes. My white gel pen. Big crystal black pen and some water, a sea sponge and a couple of rags. So let's get started. So using the current page, I just showed you as inspiration. We're gonna put all of our brushes in the water that we're gonna use. I'm gonna start out as usual with my half inch flat. Where do I wanna get started? Holy cow. I think I'm gonna get started with grabbing some yellow ochre. I should spray these and get them wet, which I didn't do. Let's do this. I'm gonna put some of yellow ochre on here and then I'm gonna add some water. Again, as always, you should know by now I prefer to do something with the background first to eliminate having to do too much with it later and work around whatever I have created as my focal point. And these are just little painting studies. They're not supposed to be masterpiece works of art or anything. They're a great way to get used to a new medium, re-acquaint yourself with a medium that you haven't worked with for a while, work out new combinations of colors and compositions. And if you're doing client work, it's a great way to work out what the client may or may not want. And I've been known to fill up entire sketchbooks with things like this. So we're gonna give this a dry, okay? I am going to take my round brush. This is round number four. This is an Escoda brush. I do like the Princeton Neptune brushes. They are my favorite. I'm gonna take the Jane Davenport paint. It's called 70s Eyeshadow. It's a very teally blue color. One of the pictures that I have here for my inspiration book is the picture of the inside of an aquarium. But I think I took after we moved to Oregon. So I think it's the local Oregon aquarium. It's not Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, but I could be wrong about that. And it just has these sort of bursted firework type shapes in the photo that I think I wanna play with abstracting on this little study. So I'm just dipping straight into the paint without diluting it with too much water, using the tip of my brush to just create some streaky paint lines.  If you let the paint sit a little bit, then it's not gonna move too much. It'll move just a little bit and that might be what you want, okay?  I think these are anemone in the photo. And I think I'm gonna go into the Jane Davenport color. It's a very bright pink called Best Friend. And I'm just touching my brush to this where I want the center to be and then pulling it up and lifting as I do. You don't, again, don't need to dig any holes to China. I know I keep saying that. You can, of course, push the brush down hard. You're gonna get a different mark. But I want you to play with how you're using the brush, how hard you're touching it to the paper. So if your color dries too much before you get over there with the water, you can always, of course, add more, which I'm doing now. Okay, let's give that a little dry and I'll be right back. I'm gonna take our smaller round brush. This is a Princeton Aqua Elite round number one. And I'm gonna go into Jane Davenport Mystic, which is a pretty purple color. I'm just gonna do some dots.  They can be very abstracted. Remember, these are little studies. We're playing with color, composition. Of course, go touch some of the dots with some water. If, again, if they don't bleed because you've done too many dots and it's dried too fast, then you can always go in with a little more paint. I do think every time I work with the Jane Davenport paints, they dry very quickly. And that's another reason to do these studies is to familiarize yourself with the medium. And if you have different kinds of watercolor paint, like I do, which ones stay wet longer? Which ones bleed better? Which ones have the color payoff that you want? This is just, this is a good exercise for that. I could, of course, be way more random about my dots than I am, but, you know, I'm having one of those kind of days where I just feel like I need to be in control. That's kind of nice, I like that. Okay, so let's go in. I'm not gonna dry that. I'm gonna just go in with, there are some very dark brown and gray tones in this painting.  Do something like that. I think I need a bigger brush. So, I think I'm gonna switch to the round number four. Whoops, yeah, that's better. Sometimes you like the very bright colors in a painting and you like where it's going as I do this one, but you feel like it needs that really dark tone to ground it or it's a very dark painting and it needs a bright color to lighten it just a little bit and it really just makes the whole thing pop. I'm gonna take that Jane Davenport ink, which is a dark blue-gray. And you notice that I only touched the brush into that paint pot once and look at how much color I've gotten out of it. The Jane Davenport paints are very pigmented, generally speaking. I don't know how light fast they are. And I don't know if you can buy just the individual colors if you run out of a color. I do think you can now. When I got mine, you couldn't. Okay, I'm gonna stop there because I really like that. I'm gonna give it a dry look. Okay, let's take the tape off. There we go. Painting number 12. I really like it. All right, what do you think? The version, sorry. If you'd like to support the free content here on Facebook or in the, here on Facebook, holy cow. If you'd like to support the free content here on YouTube or over in the Facebook art groups, I certainly would appreciate that. You can of course join Patreon. We do have YouTube membership here for a small fee. And also I have an Etsy shop and I have PayPal tip jar and all that stuff. So check out the video description. Relevant links will also be down there. And yeah, don't forget the most important things.  Do share your work with me. I would love to see what you're doing. That's it for now. See you later. Bye guys.