Last week I was fortunate to have been the keynoter at DevSpace Technical Conference in Huntsville, Alabama. DevSpace's chairman Chris Gardner reached out to me some months ago and asked if I'd be willing to talk about how I've gotten through life since the awful events of January 10th, 2017.
Below is a video of that talk. It's intense, emotional, and very likely a complete surprise to attendees who didn't already know of the tragedy that struck my family last year.
As with my KalamazooX conference talk last March, this talk also engendered strong reactions. That's OK, it's not milquetoast. One person took great offense at how I framed things between my Christianity and being open to the Universe--but my point was that no matter what your religious beliefs are or aren't, in times of great adversity and struggle you absolutely must find some way to find peace and ground yourself. If that's faith in God, wonderful. That works for me. If it's you simply being spiritual and thoughtful, then please do so.
I'm very thankful to Chris, and I'm also thankful to the attendees who said many kind things to me at the conference. It couldn't have been easy coming up to me in the hallways. I mean, really, how do you start a conversation with a guy who just got naked (METAPHORICALLY!) on stage to talk about dealing with suicide, then the murder of his wife by his 12-year-old son? Not easy. Thank you to all who passed on kind thoughts.
This talk is fairly different from the KalX talk above. Lots of overlap, but it's a different focus, because I was trying to point out to the audience that each and every one of us has the ability to weather horrible storms.
You Got This.
