I’ve always liked to speak publicly, write my opinions, help younger people in the industry find their path with teaching and tutoring. I don’t even know if I’m actually good at it, but I just genuinely enjoy it. I think this has something to do with the fact that I was undeservedly very lucky, when I started to work and breathe digital marketing. I feel like I need to give something back.
This is where I want to go.
Thursday (20 Feb) I was finally back on track, after some time that I will consider of “adjustment to the UK”. I don’t want to consider it wasted, after all. I spoke at a marketing event in London: LondonSEO Meetup. This is going to be my personal take on it, but please find more info on the official Blue Array blog (and written by a better writer than I).
Thanks to Blue Array and TechUK, who organised it, I was able to spend my sweet sweet 20 minutes rambling on my (currently) favourite topic: Information Architecture. I used my “Post-Aristotelian Information Architecture” concept to bore to death the poor fellows of the audience, including some friends whom I thank A LOT for being there. Mostly puzzled faces, which was inevitable (and weirdly flattering?), but I am happy with the reception. This idea is my little baby, I cannot for the life of me see how someone might not love it <3
I want to work on myself, improving what I do on stage: having been in a rock band 15 years ago is not enough unfortunately. Well, it did give me the idea for the slides though: they featured paintings (mostly modern art) as representation of what I was going to say. Also, they made it quite interesting for Chloe to write the aforementioned blog post :P. I’m quite proud of the idea to be honest, but I will admit that I was inspired by Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition“, which I got to know thanks to my passion for Emerson, Lake & Palmer (and their masterpiece version of it). For one, I’ll admit I did forget some concepts I wanted to mention: using Wikipedia as an example of a non-hierarchical IA, for instance. Even though it was hard due to the topic, I should always be able to make it a bit funny. And of course, my spoken English must improve.
But we’ll get there.
Oh also, I’m very happy with my jacket + rock tshirt dress-code, will stick to it whenever I can.
The night was lovely, very funny, and somewhat emotional in certain moments. I don’t have enough information re: what Victoria Olsina mentioned, but I definitely think that the industry should stick together for the things that matter: being inclusive, supporting each other, creating better workplaces, et cetera. I’m sure she might be upset at the moment, but the thing that sucks now, she’ll see as tremendous good fortune in two months. I think I lived something similar. Every time it happened to me, in retrospective I felt lucky to have lost shitty things that in that moment felt indispensable.
Absolute mad lad speaking after me, Dom Hodgson, did the single best thing that you can do on any stage (or actually anywhere): make people laugh their asses off, with an all-over-the-place SEO quiz. Absolutely amazing. Not to mention the suit: oh god, the suit.
And wow what a privilege to share the stage and learn something from Screaming Frog’s own Patrick Langridge. Real advanced shit right there, with the clearest exposition. Couldn’t close with a more knowledgeable speaker.
Downside of the night: I was so pumped with adrenaline, I ate ZERO PIZZA. I mean, come on. What the hell. I only went through the hassle of thinking of a presentation and speaking about it, so that I could have free pizza, and then I just left it there: shame on me. Might lose my Italian passport over this. 🙂
See you soon London!
Soundtrack: of course, Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Pictures at an exhibition
