On the last day of Autumn, I participated in the Startup Boost Event. Entrepreneurship Week by IAPMEI (Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation of Portugal government). Actually, it turned out quite fun and spontaneous, although I was convinced that I had a plan for it.
To be more specific, I agreed to participate in this event, be assured that I didn’t need any presentation or preparing a special speech. In fact, it was exactly this way, but I thought for some reason that it would be a simple conversation with a couple of questions. In reality, it turned out much more severe.
There was a stage with speakers using microphones and presenting their presentations. There was a runner of that event from IAPMEI named José Vale who did that work like a professional TV presenter (and later, in the coffee break, I spoke to him, and he also appeared as a very pleasant interlocutor). The only problem for me was that the whole event ran in Portuguese.
At some moment, when I thought that I understood something wrong and there would be no necessity for me to talk publicly, José announced my name! But due to I understood by that time only ten words from the event, and half of them were not even Portuguese such as “Internet” and “YouTube”, I thought that José simply mentioned my name. Therefore, another representative of IAPMEI, Sandra Alvim (who is also a wonderful person), had to come to me and ask to climb on the stage.
It’s difficult to explain what it’s like, talk about your project and answer several questions in the foreign language without any preparations. But lucky me that I didn’t have to do it in Portuguese! Also, thanks to José’s mastering, I didn’t look too silly and tedious.
Well, it was an outstanding experience for me. The second in the last two days of Autumn! Life’s getting more and more interesting!