What I Learned Speaking at Global Conferences

I have spoken infront of crows from the age of nearly 7 and it has just consistently gotten better.

One of the first major times I stepped onto a stage in front of a room full of experienced professionals, city leaders, and global thinkers, I had one thought running through my head: what am I doing here?

I was a young person from Uganda, studying in Canada, being given a microphone and an audience that included some of the most accomplished people in the world. It was one of the most uncomfortable and transformative experiences of my life, and I would not trade it for anything.

Over the past few years I have had the privilege of speaking at events like Bloomberg CityLab 2024, the UCLG 2025 Retreat, the Waterloo Innovation Summit, and much more more. Each experience has handed me a lesson I could not have learned anywhere else. Here is what I took away.

Preparation Is Respect

Before I spoke at Bloomberg CityLab 2024, I spent weeks preparing. Not because I didn’t know what I would be speaking about, I had lived it, but because I understood that the people in that room had given me their time, and time is the one thing you cannot get back.

Preparation is not about memorising a script. It’s about knowing your content so deeply that you can let go of the script entirely and speak from conviction and experience. The best speakers I’ve watched at global conferences don’t seem rehearsed, they seem certain even when they might not know exactly what they are saying. That certainty comes from preparation. Every time you step in front of an audience, underprepared, you’re telling them their time doesn’t matter. Prepare like it does.

The Room Will Take Its Cue From You

One of the most surprising things I discovered is how much energy a speaker sets in a room. When I walked on stage nervous and stiff, the audience felt it. When I walked on stage grounded and present, the atmosphere shifted almost immediately.

This connects directly to what I have come to understand about leadership. A leader’s emotional state is contagious. If you are calm, your audience becomes calm. If you are energised, they become energised. You are not just delivering a message, you are setting the emotional temperature of the room. Own that responsibility.

Your Story Is More Powerful Than Your Statistics

I have sat through presentations packed with data, research, and carefully sourced statistics that put me to sleep. And I have sat through simple, personal stories that I still think about years later.

At the UCLG Retreat, I didn’t open with a graph. I opened with a story, a real moment from the ground-level work of the Young Eye Initiative. And I watched the room lean in. Data informs. Stories move. The most effective global speakers I’ve encountered understand how to weave evidence into narrative, rather than leading with the numbers and hoping people feel something. Lead with story. Let the data support it.

Being Young Is Not a Disadvantage

There were moments at these conferences where I felt acutely aware of my age. I was often one of the youngest people in the room by a wide margin. And for a while, I let that shrink me.

What shifted my thinking was realising that I wasn’t there despite being young, I was there because of it. The rooms I was speaking in were full of people who had built careers making decisions about young people without young people in the room. My presence, my lived experience as a young person building something real was exactly what those conversations were missing. Your unique vantage point is not a liability. It is your contribution.

Networking at These Events Is a Skill You Have to Practise

Speaking at global conferences opens doors. But only if you know how to walk through them.

In the early days I would finish a talk, shake a few hands, and leave. I didn’t know how to convert a great conversation into a meaningful connection. Over time, I learned that building a professional network is its own discipline. It requires intentionality knowing who you want to connect with before you arrive, having a clear sense of what you can offer them, and following up with genuine interest rather than a transactional agenda.

Some of the most important relationships in my journey, mentors, collaborators, supporters of the Young Eye Initiative, came directly from moments after a talk, not during it. Don’t underestimate what happens in the margins of these events.

Feedback Is the Fastest Path to Growth

After every speaking engagement, I make a point of seeking honest feedback. Not the polite kind, the kind that actually helps you improve. What landed? What didn’t? Where did I lose people?

The speakers who never get better are the ones who finish a talk and assume the applause means they’ve mastered it. I’ve never walked off a stage feeling like I couldn’t have done something better. That critical self-awareness combined with the courage to ask for direct input, is one of the most important habits I’ve built. The same way I think about self-education, I think about self-improvement as a speaker: it never stops.

Every Stage Is a Responsibility

This is perhaps the most important lesson of all. When you are given a platform, especially as a young person representing a community, a cause, or a movement you are carrying something larger than yourself.

Standing on those stages, I was not just speaking for myself. I was speaking for every young person in Uganda, Canada and globally who had been told their voice didn’t belong in those rooms. For every student entrepreneur who had been dismissed as idealistic. For everyone the Young Eye Initiative exists to serve.

A platform is a privilege. Use it with purpose, with care, and with the full weight of what it means to the people who haven’t yet had the chance to stand where you’re standing.

The Stage Keeps Teaching

I am still learning every time I speak. The conference circuit has handed me a masterclass in communication, leadership, presence, and purpose that no classroom could replicate. And my biggest takeaway, above everything else, is this: say yes to the rooms that scare you. The discomfort is exactly where the growth lives.

If you’ve been invited to speak somewhere and you’re hesitating, this is your sign. Go. You’ll figure out the rest on the way.