The final countdown to the Digital Employee Experience Conference (DEX 2019) in Sydney is on. Today was the deadline for speakers to upload their final presentation decks (tick – just done mine), and in a week today will be the first of the pre-conference events for speakers, such as the speaker’s dinner next Tuesday evening. While the first conference events aren’t until Tuesday midday, I’m flying out for Sydney on Monday afternoon so I don’t have to drag someone else at my house out of bed at 3.45am on Tuesday morning to drive me to the airport; an easy drive to the airport early afternoon on Monday is much more reasonable request to make.

Step Two, the conference producers, are pretty keen that speakers give their speaking slot their best shot. Each speaker is paired with a Step Two “buddy” – an informal term for a mixture of speaking coach, presentation deck sanity checker, and content integrity verifier. I had a session with my designated buddy a couple of weeks back – being a keynote speaker I get to work with James Robertson – and his comments on my deck and content were pure gold. I have spent the past couple of days working through my notes on what he said, and deciding whether to accept / embrace or discard / reject each of his pointers. Overall I went for about 90% accept / embrace. Working with a buddy of this type is a great example of how even a keynote speech is a collaborative endeavour in advance of the day, not to mention a collaborative journey with the conference participants on the day itself. Now I just need to practice the talk about ten times, and by Thursday 9am next week in Sydney, I should be ready to go.

My bag is almost packed, my schedule for the week is pretty set, and I have printed out the maps I’ll need for getting around. I have checked and double-checked all the lists I use for getting ready. The one list I haven’t prepared yet is which sessions I’ll go to at the conference; that’s a task for tomorrow. It’s always hard when there is more than one stream at a conference because while I’d like to go to everything, it’s just not possible.

The folks at Step Two say there are some last minute tickets available for DEX next week. If you haven’t got your ticket yet, do it now (or do it tomorrow at the latest). Soon there will be no tickets left.