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

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 do it again.  

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.