Today Mindings was presented to its biggest audience yet – and boy what an audience!
I won a business competition to have a twenty-minute presenting slot at the Blue Via/Telefonica “Power of One” event at London’s iconic Battersea Power Station.
The event was a day for developers and entrepreneurs to get together and celebrate how much the individual can achieve in today’s tech industry.
The day featured keynote presentations from Silicon Valley and Silicon Roundabout luminaries, including Jason Calacanis, Morten Lund, Sam Ramji, Richard Kramer, David McCandless, Shaa Wasmund, Elizabeth Varley andCharles Arthur – in front of an audience of three hundred developers and entrepreneurs.
One single presenting slot was left open to “the best new tech start-up or start up idea we can find” and a competition was run – which Mindings won!
Nervous? What was there to be nervous about? Imagine appearing on Dragon’s Den. Live. With a studio audience. What’s there to absolutely terrified about?!
Among others, I followed a power-house opening keynote by American dot-com entrepreneur and blogger David Calacanis and a crowd-pleasing presentation by Information is Beautiful writer and designer David McCandless. Immediately preceding me was App-writer extraordinaire and creator of the viral sensation “Pah” Yosi Taguri, which had people rolling in the aisles. How to follow these amazing speakers with my small and personal story about how I dealt with my mother being diagnosed with cancer?
Well, it turns out that a small and personal story can actually affect an audience as much as a barn-storming presentation.
I had a bright spotlight in my eyes, and the room was much bigger than I’d previously been used to. Making eye contact to gauge audience reaction was tricky, but it wasn’t long into the presentations that I could see people smiling and heads nodding, I could hear laughter at the right moments, and I could feel the audience warming to my story. I was winning the audience over.
A very warm round of applause followed, then Europe’s number one technology analyst, ex Goldman Sachs Director Richard Kramer took the stage and immediately proclaimed Mindings as “inspiring” and “something that would appeal to me“, then name-checked me a further four times throughout his presentation!
A break followed and I was, frankly, mobbed. I seemed to have created quite a stir and had pats on the back, business cards thrust into my hands, offers of help, and even a man in tears – my presentation had so rung true to his personal situation (this happens to me often, actually).
Then, a while I noticed that there was a buzz on Twitter about Mindings. Several people were Tweeting lines from my presentation, and others were declaring to the Twittersphere how much they liked the concept – and people we’re re-Tweeting (so much so that our website eventually crashed!).
So, all-in-all, it was an amazing experience. Many new friends made, more people championing Mindings, the promise of press coverage and other speaking engagements.
One great day, and in my case, a great demonstration of The Power of One.
Enjoy the official video of my presentation:
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