This week I gave two presentations, which is funny considering how much I hate public speaking. The first was a demonstration of the social networking site the Table Project to a small crowd at my church (I blogged about that for the Table). The other was a Q&A on writing copy for churches at the Social Phonics Summer Camp in Minneapolis. To my amazement, the Social Phonics talk went on for an hour and a half.

I made it through both events (though nearly lost my voice after both) and people seemed to like what I said. I actually got some laughs and some tweetable comments at Social Phonics. That always helps.

I initially turned down the offer to speak at Social Phonics, but eventually I gave in to the pleading from Tony Jones. He offered to do the presentation as a Q&A if that’d be easier for me, and I was amazed at how much easier that was. It probably helped that Tony has some pretty good emcee chops, but I felt a lot more comfortable and actually knowledgeable as I talked and didn’t have to feel like Mr. Presenter Man.

I actually found all this presenting rather stimulating. I had some really good conversations afterword and was able to make some good connections, both network-wise and idea-wise. My list of articles to write for Church Marketing Sucks just tripled. Not that this introvert will be starting a speaking tour anytime soon, but sometimes it’s good to get out of your comfort zone and discover that it’s not that scary.

Plus with techno-wonder Nick Ciske speaking before me and the aforementioned Tony Jones, it was like a Billy Graham reunion. Back in the day I used to edit the BGEA site passageway.org, Nick would code it and Tony was a contributor. We just needed Steve Knight and Matthew Taylor.