My original background is in Computer Science, I graduated with a First Class Honors degree in 2001 and for the next few years worked as an Integration Consultant.

I bring this experience to the technical events that I host. Cybers, an Estonian based cyber security company, regularly hosts a industry conference and I am grateful to be the host.

My technical background allows me to connect with the conference material much closer. When I am introducing the speakers I am able to give more context and background to their topic. Basically, it helps to know what you are talking about.

I believe this helps me the most in the after talk Q&A sessions. Sure the talk is the main event, but audience members often only really solidify their understanding of what they just heard until we can conduct some question and answers after it’s done.

I am comfortable soliciting questions from the audience myself the old fashioned way but most events these days use some sort of online conference tool like “Works Up” to get feedback from the audience in real time.

I really love jumping into the audience and getting feedback direct from the people in attendance, but using a tool like Works Up allows me to create a more seamless conversation with the presenter. I can start a conversation on stage with them and then refer back to my tablet to see the most popular questions and then do my best to seamlessly work that into the Q&A. This way, the session becomes much more of a conversation, rather than a straight up “answer this question… now this question…” and in my experience, this puts speakers more at ease and they are able to give better answers.

Such online event tools also allow me to “read” the audience better during the talk and throughout the Q&A. If the questions submitted are all very detailed, advanced level topics then I know in general the audience understood the presenter and wants more details. If the questions are all quite general or seem simplistic I start to understand the audience didn’t fully process the topics and we need go back to fundamentals in the Q&A.