I was nervous but READY! I’ll show you my conference experience.

You get to come along with me to a conference! I gave a presentation and I’ll show you everything! It’ll include some great vocabulary practice and training.

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How are you feeling about your presentation?

Slightly nervous. I mean prepared for sure, but..

Love you.

Great.

I had fun with you.

I had fun with you too.

Let’s next year.

In today’s English lesson, we’re going on a work trip to a conference. We’ll go over some conference vocabulary, you’ll see somebody introducing themselves in real life, in real time, it’s going to be a blast. In each section, you’ll see words and phrases on screen that we’ll study at the end of each section.

How are you feeling about your presentation?

Slightly nervous. I mean prepared for sure, but still nervous.

I’ve never done something like this before. I need to spend just a little bit of time visualizing the room, crushing my presentation.

Yeah. That’s a good idea.

Because you know, visualization works. I know it will help me feel a lot more calm when I’m up there.

Definitely.

Presentation. I just want to point out that there are two different pronunciations of this word, both are okay.

David used e, presentation.

Presentation

I use I, presentation.

presentation

A presentation in this case means giving a lecture which is what I did at the conference.

For sure. This means certainly. Notice the reduction of for. For, for sure. There are a couple of different pronunciations of sure. I go with the same vowel as bird, er, sure. Imitate this. Make the word for really short and practice the linking and the melody. For sure.

Visualizing. I said I want to visualize the room. This is to see something in your mind to imagine it. And it’s a technique to help prepare for something important.

Visualizing.

Crushing my presentation. In this case, crushing means doing really well. I want to visualize myself feeling great about my presentation.

Crushing my presentation.

My husband and I said goodbye at the airport.

Okay, bye babe.

Bye.

Love you.

And I was off to find my gate. The way it works for security in US airports is you need to show your photo ID and show or scan your boarding pass. Recently in Philly, they’ve been doing this thing where you have to look into a camera. I’m honestly not sure if it scans your face or just takes a photo. I made it through security found my gate and walked out to the plane and a few hours later landed in Cleveland.

We’re looking for a red Chevy Malibu.

I see it. I see the Malibu. Are you Richard? I’m Rachel. Am I your next ride?

No, I’m Dan.

Oh, thank you.

Oh there. There’s a different red Chevy Malibu. Richard! Awesome I just went to a different red Chevy Malibu.

Thank you.

Two red Chevy Malibus, What are the chances?

That was funny. That guy has a red Chevy Malibu.

Yeah.

I thought it was you.

Then I checked into the front desk at the hotel.

Hi! Thanks. I’m here for the conference in case you couldn’t tell with my camera and everything. You need my ID?

Wait, what? That was so fast. Could you understand what I was saying? Let’s listen again.

You need my ID?

The phrase was: Do you need my ID?

But I dropped do, I reduced ‘you’ to ‘yuh’, the D in need was pretty much dropped as it linked into the M of my and the I diphthong of ‘my’ slid right into the I diphthong of ID, reducing linking, dropping sounds, this is all part of natural spoken American English.

You need my ID?

And you have a roommate?

Yep.

These are the kinds of questions you’re going to get asked when checking in. First name, last name, number of nights and so forth. He asked me if I had a roommate. This means someone staying in my room with me. I did because I invited my friend Laura to come to the conference with me.

She’s not here yet? She’s coming this evening.

No that’s okay, I’m sorry. I did confirm two nights, correct?

That’s right.

Did you guys have room service?

We do not. No, I apologize. Thank you Ms. Smith.

Do you know where the check-in for the conference is?

Third floor. One floor up.

So, you take those stairs where the elevator is, just down the hall.

Perfect, thank you.

Than you.

After getting checked into the hotel, I went to get checked in for the conference and see if I needed to check in for Laura.

Are you checking in?

Yeah.

Uh, my friend is arriving this evening. Should I check-in for her or will you guys still be up and running?

Okay. I maybe should check in for her and grab her badge. Her flight lands at like 6:30.

Badge. A badge at a conference is usually something you wear around your neck with your name company and so on.

Yes.

As I was checking in, one of the organizers for the event, Joe introduced himself to me. Listen to the phrases we use.

Rachel, Joe Pullizi.

Hi,nice to meet you. First he said my name then his name and he extended his hand. So this is a way you could approach someone to introduce yourself. Simply say their name to get their attention and then state your name with an extended hand. Then I said ‘Hi, nice to meet you.’ and he said ‘How are you?’ Remember that this question is actually a greeting. I have a video all about how Americans use how are you as a greeting and different ways you might answer, check out the link in the video description.

So, I’m vlogging, so you’re you may make the final cut or you may not.

I probably won’t. Thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, of course, thank you. I’m excited.

Just got in getting settled into the room and you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to hit the gym. Luckily, I took no footage of myself at the gym but I swear I really did go. The next morning we got Laura checked into the conference and headed into our first session.

Session, a conference is often split up like this. First of all, a conference is when a group of people comes together for a specific purpose, usually for a day or more. So for this conference, CEX, there were about 350 people from all over the country in Cleveland for 2 days. The conference was divided into keynotes and tracks. A keynote is a speech, talk or presentation given by one person at a time when nothing else is scheduled. It’s important. My presentation was not a keynote, mine was part of a track. A track at a conference is when there are multiple presentations going on at once in different rooms on different topics. For example, one of the tracks at this conference was on AI. So every presentation in that track was something related to AI. My presentation which was on hiring your team to help your business grow was in the Big Ideas track. My presentation was a session in that track. Sometimes sessions will not be a presentation by a single person but there will be a panel, that is many experts on one topic discussing questions from the audience or a moderator that’s someone leading the panel. A conference often has an expo component. This is where sponsors of the conference that is companies that helped pay for the conference can set up booths where conference attendees can meet them and learn about their companies.

Thinkific is the learning management system that I’ve been using for the Academy since I started and I love it. They had a board where I could write my unique genius. Woo! Need a break, need a break. Going to come into the hotel room for a little quiet time, going to get some feedback to my video editors. Oh yeah, I have to go on at 5.

Go on. In this case, ‘go on’ means to go on the stage to start my presentation.

So I’m going to need to take a little bit of just quiet time before that.

It’s been a while since I’ve been at a conference. It’s definitely its own energy to be talking to strangers constantly.

What about you, as somebody in the professional world, do you like conferences? Do you hate them? How do you feel about them? Tell me in the comments.

Okay, I’m going to get to work but first I’m going to show you, I realize I can see one of the Great Lakes from my hotel room. I love any chance I have to look at the water.

I’m a really picky traveler, so when I can I like to bring my own pillow and I put it in a very weird color pillowcase so that I always notice it and don’t forget it, because I used to do it in a white pillowcase, and then guess what, I forgot it because it blended in with the bed but I got my nice brownish terracotta-ish pillowcase, wow, is that like a big greasy spot? That is nasty. I did put a bunch of oil on my face before I went to bed last night. Sorry you had to see that. I should have been holding up this side. Anyway, I love just my perfect pillow. Okay, now I have to work.

One great thing about a conference always is meeting other people. One of those is Soundarya.

I just made a new friend, Soundarya here at the conference and she has written a book that I think a lot of you would find really relevant. Can you tell my audience out there about what you do?

Absolutely. Um, I published my second book called ‘Unshackled’ last year. Unshackled is kind of a merge of immigration policy in America, stories of immigrants and legal guidance on how you can make the best use of the immigration system to reach your goal, whether that is to work in America to start companies or to settle down, or to leave the country.

Unshackled, where’s the best place to get it?

It is on Amazon and on our own website as well. So you can visit Unshackle Club and you can get it there.

Okay, awesome thank you.

Thanks so much.

Since this conference, I’ve met with her online, she has an awesome online community and I really encourage you to check out her work and her book if you’re interested in immigrating to the United States. The book again is Unshackled and I’ll link to it in the video description.

My session starts in 1 hour and 3 minutes. I’m feeling a little nervous and I have to resteam my pants because I’ve been sitting in them all day and they got new wrinkles. I’ve never steamed something before but this hotel doesn’t have an iron, it has a steamer!

What do you do when you’re nervous? I said yesterday I was going to do some visualization and that’s true and I’ve already done it, the thing I need to remember is I want to visualize not just being on the stage and like feeling relaxed, but I need to visualize like the 20 minutes before when I’m just sitting there waiting to go on stage, that might be the worst.

So, I had never used a steamer before but I actually really liked it, and I was going to another conference the next week and guess what? I bought one. I bought a steamer. And then I had a friend stay the next week and she asked if I had one. So it ended up being a useful little gadget.

Okay, done. Turned out pretty well but now I can’t sit down after I put them on until I’m done.

Okay. It’s time. It’s time to head down. Wish me luck.

I just got mic’d and they gave me my clicker so it’s very official now. Oh, and it’s got a laser pointer. Oh yeah, that’s totally messing with my camera.

This was my first time ever talking about my business of teaching English online and it was really fun. More fun than I expected. I didn’t know how much I would like sharing about my own experience. The pressures of building a business of hiring someone to work on your team with you.

Or do I really want the pressure of taking care of someone else’s family like it’s pretty full of pressure taking care of my own family. I totally hear that, and I I do think that is why the first hire is your hardest and I’m going to address that in this talk but if you can just get over that hump and try it. It actually really is magical because now, you’re able to take some of the tasks that, let’s face say you’re kind of bored doing now anyway. You give it to the other person. And then you’re over here while that work is happening and you can either not work or you can be thinking about the next big project, getting your next lead, that kind of thing.

I hear that. This phrase is used to mean I understand and I agree with you. Someone had talked earlier about being worried about hiring someone and how that would make it more stressful because he would need to generate enough money to pay for that person’s salary too. I felt the same way when I made my first hire so I said ‘I hear that.’

Get over the hump. This means to get past the hard part. It implies that after the hard part, things will be easier. So I’m telling people if they can get over the hump, the hard part of making their first hire, they’ll likely see that it was positive for their business.

I finished up my talk, answered some questions and my time at the conference was coming to a close. It was time to discuss getting to the airport.

So 5:22 minus 90 minutes is like let’s say 3:50.

Hmmhm.

So let’s say we leave here around 3:30, so we call a cab around 3:15.

Okay.

What, what’s that? How’s that line up with the schedules?

We could listen to this session,

Okay.

And part of the next.

Okay.

Alright. I mean, might as well, right?

Yeah.

Let’s go do it.

We’re here.

Oh, gosh I,

Oh, were you there?

I was there but you’re, you were only half there.

That’s all you need to see of me.

No, I need more.

After catching one last session it was time to get our luggage which we’ stored at the front desk.

Hello, front desk.

You know what, don’t worry about it, let me let me help you. It’s totally fine. It’s not very steady. There we go, double whammy. No, that was my fault. Thank you, appreciate it. Double whammy. This means a second blow or a second setback. When two bad things happen. So first, the bag fell over for her and then it fell over for me. Double whammy.

Laura, what did you think of the conference?

It was great.

I had fun with you.

I had fun with you too. Let’s do it again.

Let’s next year.

Huge thanks to my friend Laura for coming with me to this conference, it made it so much more fun, and thank you for watching. Keep your learning going now with this video and don’t forget to subscribe with notifications on, I absolutely love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

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