The unthinkable becomes reality.

Intro

I just completed my first conference talk! It was at Swift Leeds in Leeds, UK.

• Info, code examples, and Q&A

I wanted to share my experience and also give some encouragement to others to give conference speaking a try.

Background

I’ve followed Swift Leeds online for years. My friend Bas spoke there last year and I remember watching his recording as soon as it was posted last fall.

If you would have told me when I was watching his recording that I’d be on that stage the next year I would have laughed in your face.

I’m one of the hosts of iOS Dev Happy Hour, which is a monthly online meetup. I can remember when I first became an organizer that I would feel nauseous just having to intro myself to the audience before letting the other hosts take over while I performed background tasks. Now I truly do not care. Heck, one month I unexpectedly had to host a chunk of the event by myself thanks to technical difficulties and that didn’t bother me. But being on stage giving a talk to several hundred people where the results are put on YouTube for the world to see? That would be between “hard pass” and “hell to the no”.

Still as time went on I couldn’t shake this feeling that conference speaking was something I should try. I wouldn’t say I had a desire to do it, but it kept feeling like it was something I should try for personal growth.

Should I Do This?

Honestly I was a little intimidated to apply to give my first talk halfway around the world in a country I’ve never been to, but there were several factors that pushed me to do it.

#1 - Swift Leeds

I’d been following Swift Leeds online for years and have had some great interactions with the founder, Adam Rush. I knew that they were very accommodating to new speakers. They select their speakers from an anonymized system where they have no idea who is submitting what. There’s no picking their friends or well known names. Because of that they’ve become known for often putting the spotlight on brand new speakers.

Here’s what they say about it:

Many potential speakers, especially those from under-represented groups or those who have never spoken at a conference, may rule themselves out unnecessarily.

We want to hear from everybody in the Swift community and urge you to submit a proposal. Our team at SwiftLeeds review all talks anonymously.

All our speakers join us for the entire year. This means we offer full speaker training and any support you require throughout the process, from reviewing slides to helping with speaker nerves.

SwiftLeeds is known for allowing first-time speakers to be on stage and present a talk; many have then gone on to speak at many other conferences worldwide.

So this clearly would be a welcoming choice for someone like me with zero speaking experience.

#2 - Josh Holtz

Josh was also a speaker at Swift Leeds in 2024. His talk was so inspiring to me and was about refactoring fear. Josh had/has/had a fear of speaking because of a stutter and he still gets up on stages around the world giving talks. What possible excuse could I have?

#3 - Tim Condon

Tim is an incredible public speaker and this YouTube Short of him just spoke to my soul.

I had wrestled with thinking that some of my material was too basic and that people already knew this but this short helped talk me out of it. During our speaker training Adam also told us that we have to remember that there are going to be beginners in the audience.

Plus I had worked through some really interesting problems with time zones and describing how I dealt with them was something I wouldn’t have any chance of feeling imposter syndrome with.

#4 - Michael Flarup

I quoted Michael in my talk but it was something else he said during the keynote for Deep Dish Swift that helped me tremendously. I’ve noticed that each time that I attend Deep Dish Swift there is one talk that affects me drastically. This year it was Michael’s talk. I remember hearing him say this quote while sitting in that conference room in Chicago and it hit me like bolt of lightning.

I have one hack I would like to give you all. Some of the most successful projects I have made would never have happened if I didn’t use this one special trick. You guys ready? It’s just between us.

Self delusion.

If you unsure of whether or not you can pull something off, just imagine that you’re someone who can.

Allow yourself to suspend disbelief and step into the role of someone who already achieved what you’re aiming for, by convincing yourself, even temporarily, that you are capable of doing the thing, you can push past self doubt and hesitation.

Now, we can all wrestle with whether or not we’re good enough to do something new, whether or not that’s shipping an app, or speaking at a conference, or making a game.

But sometimes the best trick is just to pretend that you can and see what happens.

I can’t tell you how many times I applied this advice during this journey. Any time some doubt would creep into my head I would “self delusion” it away. Hell, I was doing it backstage minutes before I was about to go on.

Time To Apply

I spent a good deal of time working on my proposal trying to convey what I was going for. Time zones are a weird topic but at the same time that probably helped me stand out from other proposals during the selection process.

I hadn’t told anyone that I was going to try applying to Swift Leeds (easier to back out if I changed my mind) but I did end up asking Klemens Strasser to give me some feedback on my submission, which he was nice enough to do.

You’re In!

After WWDC I went to visit family. I distinctly remember them asking “What’s wrong??” when I walked into the kitchen while I was checking my email. I had gasped because I realized that I had an acceptance email in my inbox. Before I knew it I was in the Swift Leeds Slack channel for speakers.

Time To Get To Work

I had no idea how to make a good presentation and had never even opened Keynote before being accepted. Mikaela Caron sent me this Keynote tutorial from Peter Friese. His tutorial was was incredibly helpful.

Peter ended up being a fellow speaker so I was able to thank him in person!

Great slides, much attention to detail, @chriswu.com !

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— Peter Friese (@peterfriese.dev) October 7, 2025 at 10:46 AM

I actually had a pretty good idea of the structure of the whole talk. I just had to translate that into Keynote slides.

Keynote ended up really impressing me and Magic Move became my best friend.

Speaker Training

Swift Leeds offers speaker training, which I found invaluable as someone who was completely new to this. Adam had lots of useful tips and was more than happy to answer all of the questions we had as upcoming speakers.

I'm glad that during our speaker training for @swiftleeds.co.uk Adam pointed out that we shouldn't get hung up on try to make an error free, perfect presentation.

That's not realistic and puts unnecessary pressure on you.

As a first time speaker this has really helped my practice sessions.

— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) September 24, 2025 at 10:58 AM

Arrival

The weird thing about having a big event on your calendar for so long is that it feels so strange when you’ve got less than a week to go. I definitely had an “I can’t believe this is happening” moment as I was sitting in the airport waiting for my journey to the UK to start.

Before I knew it, I was in the UK for the first time in my life. Ironically, one of my main concerns about my time zone talk was being affected by jet lag because of time zone changes. I was really careful to arrive several days before the conference in order to give myself time to adjust. Meanwhile fellow speaker Erin Sparling makes an epic journey at practically the last minute and delivers a great talk. I could not do that!

Speaking of jet lag, on the first day I got to see how my friend Will held up after staying up 26 hours.

On the second day Bluesky power user Matt and I hung out and soon I got to meet my friend Shaun in person for the first time. He’s quoted in my talk and saved me a few years ago by alerting me that I had launched an app without submitting my IAP to app review. 🤦 I just realized I am absolutely the worst for not buying him a drink that day to thank him.

My absolute favorite thing that we did in London was going to see a virtual ABBA concert, which Will and Adrian joined us for. I have no shame in revealing that I talked them all into doing this. It was AMAZING.

Let’s Get To Leeds

It felt like I had just arrived in London when it was already time to make our way to Leeds. To quote Daniel Steinberg, “I love being places - I don’t love getting there”. I’m the same way and actually was not looking forward to the train ride. I ended up really enjoying it however. It was interesting looking at the scenery and talking to Will and Matt made the time fly by.

Arrival

After checking in at the hotel and taking some time to just relax, it was time to start heading to the Leeds Playhouse. The building is unmistakable and I recognized it as soon as I saw it. I loved this venue for a conference.

I’m all checked in for @swiftleeds.co.uk !

This venue is lovely.

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— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 6, 2025 at 2:18 PM

Swift Leeds runs a talk show the night before the conference as a separate event. They have a host and their chosen panelists on the stage discussing the current state of things in the Apple development world.

Started the conference off with the Swift Leeds talk show. Everybody did a nice job, including Klemens.

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— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 6, 2025 at 6:23 PM

Sofia was also on the panel. She and César have been so supportive of me during this journey.

I kept staring at that podium thinking about how I’d be up there tomorrow.

Conference Start

Very surprisingly when I woke up the morning of my talk I wasn’t nervous at all. That wouldn’t last, but we’ll get to that later.

I am very surprisingly not a ball of nerves tonight.

I’ve practiced a lot and I know the material inside and out.

Very looking forward to getting it done, however and just relaxing completely on day two.

— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 6, 2025 at 6:24 PM

What a thrill it was to see Adam come out on stage to formally start the conference. He was running on THREE hours sleep because his third child was born the day before. 😱

I definitely had another “I can’t believe this is happening” feeling. The introductory video that he showed explored the background of the conference. It was so well done that it made me a little emotional knowing I was now going to be a small part of their history.

The keynote speaker was Daniel Steinberg. I had heard a variation of his talk earlier in the year at Deep Dish Swift and honestly it felt like such a privilege to be able to watch him also give this modified version of it. The man is such a gifted storyteller.

Before I knew it it was already lunchtime. This year they tried something new for lunch. They partnered with a market that was really close to the theater that had a very large food hall. We were given vouchers and could go to almost any of the food vendors that we wanted. There was such a wide variety of choices, and the market was interesting to look at.

The vouchers we were given more than covered my food and drink choices. I thought this experiment was a smashing success.

Crash

It was soon after lunch or things fell apart for me and I crashed hard. I knew that my time was coming up quickly and that finally caught up with me. I remember feeling like my heart was absolutely racing and my head was spinning. I didn’t dare look at my heartbeat measurement at the time but I now know that I was “only” 112 BPM. I honestly would have thought it was much higher. I also now know that I hit 132 bpm when I got on stage.

REALLY appreciate Daniel Steinberg and @peterfriese.dev mentioning that they have a racing heart and shaking hands from being nervous about speaking today.

Nerves are a part of this.

— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 7, 2025 at 6:07 AM

It was actually Tim Condon that snapped me out of it. I mentioned previously that he’s such a gifted speaker. He could make a tax form sound interesting. But the stats about Swift on the Server he was sharing were genuinely fascinating and I got so caught up in his talk that I completely forgot that I was nervous.

You’re Up Next

I was lucky enough to be assigned to a time slot that had a 30 minute break before it. That gave me time to get my AV setup completed with James as well as to go on the stage and get a feel of what it was like to be up there. He and I had a nice discussion and I had no idea that people could actually see us doing that on the live stream. 😆

Adam gave me some encouraging words as I was getting mic’ed up by the theater staff.

Something came up that required everyone’s attention and I ended up being alone backstage for several minutes. I had every reason to crash out again at this point, but I honestly didn’t. I stayed calm and knew what I had to do. Besides “self delusion” I kept thinking of this advice I had bookmarked from public speaking expert Vinh Giang: “When you don’t rehearse you sound your worst.”

I had absolutely done the work with rehearsing this talk. I rehearsed it so much I was honestly sick of it but knew that there was no chance I was going to completely forget what to say for certain sections. No one would ever know, but in a few places I messed up how I liked to word some sections. But I had practiced so much that it was easy for me to adjust and rephrase them.

I felt like I had given this talk 1000 times and now I just need to make it 1001 times.

Showtime

I had some friendly banter with Adam on stage and before I knew it the spotlight was only on me and all the months of preparation and anticipation finally culminated in this moment. To be completely honest, I did have a momentary lapse when I first started talking. I was thinking “I don’t want to do this, get me out of here”, but I was able to silence that inner voice and just focus on giving the best talk I could. I do distinctly remember at one point looking down at the timer and being shocked that it said that 21 minutes had already passed. It certainly didn’t feel that way.

Antoine van der Lee is an accomplished speaker and wrote a fantastic blog post with tips for first time speakers. I followed several of them and I made it a point to follow this on one stage:

Performing the talk is the one thing you have been looking forward to for the past few days, if not weeks. You might be a little nervous, which is understandable! Yet, it’s essential to try to enjoy this moment as much as possible.

Once I hit my final section (accessibility), I knew that I was good to go. I was already past all of the parts that had tripped me up in practice and I made it through them without any major problems. I did allow myself to take in the moment and enjoy myself.

And just like that it was over. I had done it and was now a conference speaker.

I can be my own worst critic but I was honestly happy with how I did. Some of the minor mistakes I made make me cringe but expecting perfection isn’t realistic.

And thanks to Feli for this wonderful sketch note about my talk!

Wow, look at this sketch that @felibe444.bsky.social completed almost immediately after my @swiftleeds.co.uk talk.

I love it! 🤩

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— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 7, 2025 at 6:44 PM

Q&A

Since there was time for questions from the audience Adam came out and selected some.

I don’t think it did so hot with my answers on stage, but once I had time to calm down and do research my answers were much better.

I found it hilarious that I got to discuss why I’m so unhappy with Apple Watch faces on a global stage. This happened because during the lead up to the conference the organizers asked us to please not cuss on stage. I jokingly said that I wouldn’t as long as they didn’t ask about Apple Watch faces. So of course they asked about Apple Watch faces to mess with me. 😆

THEY ASKED ME ABOUT APPLE WATCH FACES ON STAGE.

I IMPROVISED THAT ANSWER.

— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 7, 2025 at 11:31 AM

During my talk and Q&A I couldn’t really see into the audience because of the bright lights. It wasn’t until the Q&A section was almost over that I realized my friends Matt and Bas were sitting in the front row to support me. 🥲

Feedback

A sincere thank you to everyone who approached me during the conference and told me that they enjoyed my talk. It really meant so much to me. Enough people have expressed surprise that it was my first talk that I’m starting to believe that they weren’t just saying that to be polite.

Fellow speaker Aline Borges was so nice and after my talk she was excited to show me a quiz she had pulled up on her phone about date and time weirdness (I think in Python??). Somehow I managed to get a passing grade.

Day Two

Because I was scheduled for the first day I was able to just enjoy the second day of the conference with a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. Swift Leeds is a great experience with some wonderful people that attend and run it.

I got to get a photo with many of my accessibility heroes! Klemens was there also.

Accessibility crew at @swiftleeds.co.uk !

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— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 8, 2025 at 12:58 PM

Closing Speaker

The closing speaker for the conference was Ekaterina Volkova who gave a wonderful talk on imposter syndrome. She also recently spoke at NSSpain and boy did I relate to this quote from her recap video. When I was crashing I had the same thoughts.

For a second, I seriously considered running, just slipping out of the back door, suitcase in hand, and pretending the trip was just nothing but holiday.

But the host looked at me just one glance, one smile, and he whispered, you are ready.

Reflecting

I couldn’t help but think over and over again how I had gotten to this point.

Because I decided in 2020 to get serious and spend the time I would’ve spent commuting to learning SwiftUI I was now on the other side of the world because of that decision. During the 100 Days of SwiftUI Paul Hudson had requested that we post about our progress each day on social media.

At the time I thought it was a weird request but since he was giving us the course for free, how could I possibly refuse? Doing that let me find this whole online community.

Thought about this meme a lot this week.

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— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 12, 2025 at 7:30 AM

I Love Swift Leeds

Swift Leeds definitely won my heart and before it was even over I was thinking “I have to come back for this”. We are so lucky to have people like Adam, Josh, and Tim that sacrifice so much (and put themselves in such financial risk) to put on these conferences that the community gets so much out of.

I’m so grateful to Adam and his team for handling a nervous first time speaker perfectly.

I was about 5 trillion miles outside of my comfort zone this week with my first conference talk (in a different country no less).

Adam and his team at @swiftleeds.co.uk were so supportive.

I definitely want to go back. What a wonderful experience this conference is.

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— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 8, 2025 at 5:52 PM

Cheering On My Friends

A big “congrats” to my friends Tamia, Montana, and Ben who were also first time speakers that were giving their talks at the same time at Swift Connection in France. Ben and I had a friendly (?) rivalry to see who would become a conference speaker first since we were both presenting on the same day.

Ironically he had an advantage because of time zones since he was in France and I was in the UK.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who supported me on taking this wild journey. Especially poor Matt, who had to hear my talk the most in practice sessions.

You Can Do It!

I hope that my story can give some encouragement to people that are thinking about stepping on stage for the first time. It’s OK to be scared. I certainly was at times. But if you can push past that and make yourself do it anyway you can do things that previously felt impossible.

I didn’t want anyone to look at my YouTube video without any context and think that it was easy for me and unrelatable for someone who has some hesitation about speaking. It definitely wasn’t easy but I did it and so can you.

Practice some “self delusion” and you’ve got this!

I’m ending my UK adventure feeling a rush of emotions: happiness, sadness, gratitude, disbelief, and a little pride for forcing myself to do this.

I did the whole “seek discomfort” thing this week and I feel that it really paid off.

— Chris Wu 🪐 (@chriswu.com) October 12, 2025 at 9:30 AM

End

Conference speaking is no joke. It was a ton of work and sometimes very stressful.

Am I glad that I did it? 1000% yes! It was a rewarding experience and an adventure that I’ll never forget.

Do I want to speak at a conference again? Right now I’m a solid “maybe”. 😉

Contact

If this post was helpful to you I’d love to hear about it! I’m @chriswu.com on Bluesky and @MuseumShuffle@mastodon.social on Mastodon and my email is museumshuffle at gmail dot com.