My Evolving Journey towards Public Speaking

‘Public Speaking’

This skill is becoming inevitable nowadays not only in offline conferences, seminars and meetups but also in online platforms. There is a need to share our knowledge and inspire others to guide them on the right path. Each and every person will have some unique knowledge that can help others learn something new and apply it in their daily life.

Also, In our office work during meetings, we need to showcase our work to a large audience, need to convey the core idea and engage them throughout our talk so that they can provide some feedback to implement that idea in our work process.

When hearing about public speaking, some people will get nervous about participating and avoid speaking. Also, It’s not a cup of tea for everyone. Even I was like that. But at one point I thought to take this as a challenge to get started with it.

In this blog, I am sharing my experience towards Public speaking so that it can help not only software testers but also other professionals to get started with it.

A nervous start

When I started my career as a software tester, Brijesh Deb from The Test Chat Community invited me to deliver a webinar sharing my learnings from James Bach’s Rapid Software Testing Applied course. This was my first talk related to software testing.

Initially, I shared my presentation with James Bach. He provided some feedback like explaining more personally about how this course helped you understand and enhance your software testing knowledge. Also, he asked me to show the test session reports and bug reports to showcase my work during that course.

After addressing his feedback, I was ready to present it. The webinar was scheduled for 22nd August 2020. During the webinar, I was nervous and stammered when talking, but I didn’t lose the points that I needed to speak. I was able to explain and share my experience about that course really well. Because of this webinar, I made new friends and even some people asked whether I provided any training. I just shared the information about that course so that they could explore and take it up.

Here is the video of that webinar which was available on YouTube TTC E4 ft Balaji S on Lessons Learned from Rapid Software Testing

My First Interview

I came to know about The Testerspeak interview series from The Test Chat Community and have learned a lot from the interview knowing about different kinds of experiences from People who were working in the Software testing industry. One fine day, Brijesh Deb mentioned that you were going to be featured in The Testerspeak series. I was surprised and felt happy at that time as I was the young tester to be interviewed. I have prepared myself mentally before that interview so that I am in a position to answer and share my thoughts.

The interview was scheduled for 20th December 2020. During that interview also, I stammered a bit but I tried to convey my thoughts properly so that it could help others who were listening to the interview. I was able to answer almost all the questions Brijesh posed to me. Overall, it was a great experience for me.

Here is the link to the interview: TesterSpeak Ep 19 ft Balaji Santhanagopalan

My First Conference Talk

During 2022, I got an opportunity to speak at a testing conference finally that too offline in Bangalore. As it was my first talk at a testing conference, I prepared properly to present my thoughts clearly to the audience. Game of Testing 2022 is the conference and the title of my topic was “Embedded systems software – How to test it?”My talk was scheduled for 18th September 2022.

During the conference, I explained the concepts required to understand Embedded Systems Software testing and also performed a live demo testing a servo motor using the Arduino Uno board and Xcos software. Even though I was nervous in a few places, This conference talk went really well. It was also available on YouTube. I have received some feedback from Nishant Gohel, one of my friends from Linkedin. He asked me to reduce some of the content in the presentation so that it does not overload the audience, avoid fillers when talking, and give some pauses between the sentences.

Here is the link to my Conference talk: GoT 2022 – Embedded systems software – How to test it? : Let’s Level Up by Balaji Santhanagopalan

Webinar delivered in a company

In 2021, I got an opportunity from my friend Rahul Parwal to deliver a webinar for his company IFM Engineering Private Limited on the topic “Embedded Software Testing” to share my knowledge about Embedded Systems Software Testing. It was a wonderful experience delivering a webinar on this topic as there was not much content available related to Embedded Systems Software Testing. Based on this, I did my first conference talk in 2022.

Webinar delivered to Engineering Students

During 2023, I got an opportunity to deliver a webinar about “Career In the Field of Software Testing” for college students from IEEE SB, Panimalar Group Of Institutions. I felt really happy to share my knowledge with engineering students and provided awareness about various kinds of roles and jobs around Software Testing.  I have also received minor feedback to improve my response to the query posted.

Other public speaking activities:

During 2023 and 2024, I got some opportunities to speak at The Test Tribe Chennai offline meetups which provided me a platform to share my knowledge and connect with Testers from Chennai. Here is the recent event: The Test Tribe 26th Chennai Meetup

I have been invited by some YouTube channels to provide some tips and suggestions for the software testing arena and also done an Instagram live with The Test Tribe.

Key Takeaways:

After all this experience with Public Speaking, I have observed that participating in public speaking activities helped me to improve my confidence in front of several experiences. Because of this, I was able to conduct meetings in my office where I needed to present my work to several stakeholders. It has also helped me in networking with people from the software testing industry.

Also, It has shaped my creative and critical thinking skills by coming up with examples that can help people understand what I am trying to convey and evaluate the contents and the message that I need to deliver.

Even though I have done several talks, I need to improve a lot in terms of content and my speaking skills which I will try to improve in the upcoming years. I would like to thank my friends and mentors who have helped me throughout my public speaking Journey and guided me to understand the nuances of Public Speaking.

Overall, Public Speaking can be a wonderful skill to learn and embrace, which can help in each and everyone’s Career growth. It can help to enhance your leadership skills to guide, influence and motivate anyone to get started with something.

I hope this article motivates people to get started with it. Also, I would like to hear about your Public Speaking experience so that I can learn from you.