Keep Calm and Tech On

Take a deep breath and troubleshoot one issue at a time. Woooh-saaah…

Close your eyes and allow me into your imagination. You start with a mere thought, a simple but challenging idea. You present the idea to a few friends and though you are not completely sure you can bring the idea to fruition, you convince yourself to try it anyway. Three weeks goes by and there have been many long days and nights filled with ample struggles from learning new technologies to tackling new libraries. Fast forward, it's presentation day. The MC calls your name and excitedly you begin to share the birth of a new application, one where you’ve poured in weeks of hard work. You begin your presentation and everything is going as planned. You finally get to the demo portion and a voice comes across zoom. “Hey Music, are you sharing youe app screen,” asks the MC. The view has gone black.

You think to yourself, “of course I am. I have practiced this but never with so many people watching all at once.” You reply with, “Yes, I do believe I am.” Inside, your stomach has turned to knots and you begin to sweat. All the while, you keep smiling. You end up restarting your screen share multiple times. Close your app. Restart the application in the terminal. And it seems like hours have gone by and your screen share finally resumes. You are hopeful. Okay, you think, now everyone will finally see all of my hard work. You enter into the app and then… your next worst nightmare. It runs slower than dial up… What are you to do?

Here is some simple advice from future me to past me. First of all, take a deep breath. When you are prepared, people will recognize that. Take things step by step. When your application runs slowly, have small facts that you can share with the audience while it loads. Next, don’t beat yourself up over things that are out of your control. Do your best to be prepared and then roll with what happens like it was meant to happen that way all along. With a live audience, there will always be surprises. Just keep calm and smile on. Everything will be alright in the end.