I am super excited and cannot remember if I posted about this before but now that everything is getting to the final stages and it is really going to happen I thought I would write a post all about this next exciting opportunity.
HealtheVoices is not something I had heard. Fairly recently while looking on Twitter I came across them and the conferences they have done as well as the amazing patient advocacy. HealtheVoices provides a ground breaking leadership conference for those involved in advocacy for their own health conditions, the communities around them and others as well. The conference is to empower those in advocacy to continue the work they do and get as much impact as possible from it. They have been organising these conferences and this year it will be their 5th event.
I can’t remember applying for the conference or filling in the form so when I got an email in January asking me to be a speaker and lead a session I was shocked but also had a huge sense of pride that despite asthma dictating my life I have had so opportunities as a result of it which are truly once in a lifetime events.
The event this time is over in America. I fly to Dallas Texas in a weeks time and am so excited. I have never been to Texas and will have the chance to have a few days being a tourist out there to.
We have just got off possibly the biggest conference call I have been part of. I think there were 69 participants in total. Most of these people were members who are coming to the conference and not all speakers. They said there was well over 350 applicants so to be short listed to give a talk is probably one of my greatest achievements.
The one down side (if you can call it that) to this is I have had to 1) prepare what I am going to say and 2) put together a power point presentation. Many who read this will know my aversion to slides and my slight aversion to preparing. As Allison would say I just like to wing it or busk it!!! For this though I cant. So I have put together some slides myself which I think look ok just waiting on the legal team to give them the ok! I have also written most of my talk. 45 minutes is a long time!!! I will be giving my talk a test run with my Mum so fingers crossed that goes well, may even run it by my little brother too depending how brave I am!!!
Public speaking is something I have grown into. A good friend of mine and PPI colleague Elisabeth likes to recall the story of when we first met when I was so shy and quiet that she struggled to hear me speak. Now she struggles to get me to shut up!!! With every talk I give I can feel my comfort with speaking grow. I still get very nervous at certain events and was so thankful on some occasions that I have had a lectern to stand behind because my legs were shaking so much but on the whole I feel ok when I am speaking.
I am so proud to be able to go and share my story and tell others about how great being involved in research is, all the different things you can do and how to get involved. I am also teaming up with webMD too which will be awesome as they have a huge online platform.
Will be tweeting and blogging from the conference if there is time although it seems like a jam packed program. The conference will be streamed live so will post the link for this when I know it. Remember though there is a time difference!!!
ANONYMOUS-ASTHMA 