Run Up 2025

I had attended Leeds Sharp a few times prior to any sort of involvement with the group and had some really interesting chats with people of all different professional levels. It’s a well run, engaging environment full of Microsoft MVP’s, people in consultancy, startups, healthcare and even tech adjacent businesses. So if you want to network and receive a free top-class presentation I’d highly recommend it!

Like most things, you get out of them what you put in, the after pub social is recommended as opportunities such as the one I am going to talk about come up.

How I Got the Spot

A personal target of mine was so improve my public speaking skills, it came up in my mentoring at work and we set a goal to speak at the next event I could. Little did I know that John Staveley the organiser of the Leeds Sharp would mention doing a shorter presentation to myself the same week. I didn’t turn the opportunity down and got right to writing.

Afterthoughts

My actual presentation was about avoiding failure, an all rounder on the best ways to mitigate cirumstances which may produce a scenario in which the application or project for that matter would hit a snag.

The presentation went well I thought and I had some questions in the pub later. I will say that as soon as you get up there everything leaves your head, and I had no speaker notes available, so make sure you know your stuff!

I also want to add a thankyou to John S again for having a meeting with me prior to the actual presentation to go over it and help me fix up any issues as well as my partner for doing the same, about 5 or 6 times, I always think that she could probably give any presentation I do and vice versa the amount of times we practice with it to each other.

If you’re thinking of giving a presentation, go for it!

Last modified on 2025-07-08