OCALICONLINE 2023- How Far I've Come
As you may recall, last year I spoke at OCALICONLINE. It was a goal that I had been trying to reach since I started public speaking with Dr. Brooks in 2019. This led to me being a keynote speaker this past June (Keynote). While I was selling books at the Keynote conference, I met a woman named Jo Hannah. Jo Hannah is the Director of the Office for Exceptional Children at the Ohio Department of Education, and it just so happens that she went to high school with my mom. Jo Hannah introduced me to her coworker, Joe… I know it's confusing… and they had a proposition for me.
“So for OCALICONLINE, we always have a leaders session,” Joe explained.
“We have someone come in and talk to everybody about their experiences, and we think it would be cool if you and your parents spoke at it this year,” Jo Hannah continued. “What do you think?”
I'm not going to lie to you. I was a little bit hesitant. I did public speaking online through the pandemic, but it wasn't my best work. I kind of need my entire body to convey my message when I'm public speaking. On top of that, the name of the installment that I wrote about speaking at OCALICONLINE 2022 was called “OCALICONLINE- Only One Place I Can Go.” That title is indicative of my thought process. After speaking at OCALICONLINE, the only place I could go was up. I thought doing it again might be a bit of a step back. I thought that it would be more or less the same people coming to hear me speak, and by extension, I would not be helping anyone new. But Jo Hannah and Joe are the most influential people that actually know my name. At the very least, from a networking standpoint, it was only logical for me to say yes.
On August 21st, I had an online meeting with Jo Hannah, Joe, and their other coworker, Monica. Just for a little context, the presentation that I always give is about my education as a kid and then my adult life as someone who works with autistic kids. The plan was for me to change the presentation a little bit. I would insert places for my parents to add their input during my education portion, and Joe wanted me to summarize my adult life, not just the working with autistic kids part. It's lucky that I have a blog and podcast that completely depicts my adult life; I just made a slide to summarize each season.
Last Tuesday, November 14th, I got up early, looked over my presentation one more time, got ready for the day, and drove to Dad's studio, Kobolt. I got to the studio at 9:00 a.m., which was right when we were supposed to be logging on. Mom and Dad were on a laptop in Mom's office, and I set up in the conference room upstairs. Jo Hannah, Joe, my parents, and I ran through all the technical stuff with the audio-visual specialist, and then, at 9:30, people entered the meeting.
The session started with Joe and Jo Hannah giving updates about great things happening in education in Ohio, and once they finished, they introduced Mom, Dad, and me. I'm not going to go over my entire presentation because that would take too long. I will say it was really fun for me to do public speaking with my parents and get their perspective on my childhood. Also, I was sharing my screen, so I couldn't see the Zoom screen, but Mom said that there were 329 people in attendance, and most of them were administrators and principals! After finishing the presentation, we were sent into breakout rooms to discuss and answer questions!
I don't want to undercut my initial OCALICONLINE conference; I would not be where I am today if it were not for that conference. Despite that and my initial hesitancy, OCALICONLINE 2023 was absolutely the superior conference. The first reason is my session during the 2022 conference was a pre-recorded session, and this one was live, which made me feel more involved.
The second reason is more people came! I forget how many people came last year, but I'm pretty sure we didn't break 50. I get that most of that is because of my connection to Jo Hannah and Joe, but whether we're talking about OCALICONLINE or any other public speaking gig, this is the biggest crowd I've ever spoken to! I feel good about how far I’ve come, especially in the last year, and I’m very grateful to all who have shown an interest in my work.
Have a Greattastic day and be safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri
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