meetings

sometimes two weeks ago, I held a professional development presentation at work. It was on something I’ve spent the last year thinking about and building around—the imperativeness (and maybe superiority) of context over prompts in applied AI (more on this later).

but more than the topic, I was struck by how calm my presentation was. I spoke, responded to questions, followed the thread of conversation without losing myself in it. Even managed to play into my usual self-deprecating joke of being the anticlimax. laughters.

it didn’t feel forced.

i have always disliked meetings.

i started in tech about four years ago, and stand-ups quickly became the default. But what threw me off wasn’t the structure of the meetings but the performance. How people could stretch the smallest updates into something grand. I never had that because… my words don’t dress up like that.

last year, I joined a new company where about 90% of the team is based in Europe. Meetings are still frequent, but simpler. Weekly all-hands rotate across the team, which means at some point, you’re leading one. I led mine earlier this year, having missed the first one that coincided with a team offsite in Morocco last year.

somewhere in all of this, meetings stopped feeling like something to avoid. not because I’ve changed completely, or suddenly enjoy talking more. But because I no longer feel like I have to be anyone else in them.