Speaker 1: 0:02

You have taste in a way that's meaningful to software people.

Speaker 2: 0:07

Hello, I'm Bill Gates. I would recommend TypeScript. Yeah, it writes a lot of code for me and usually it's slightly wrong.

Speaker 1: 0:20

I'm reminded incidentally of Rust here, rust. This almost makes me happy that I didn't become a supermodel, cuber and netics.

Speaker 3: 0:31

Well, I'm sorry guys, I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about large neural networks. It's really an honor to be here. Rust Data topics Welcome to the data. Welcome to the data topics podcast.

Speaker 4: 0:45

Hello and welcome to Data Topics Unplugged Deep dive, your casual corner of the web where we discuss all about building charisma and confidence. My name is Murillo. I'm hosting this intro together with Bart. Hey, bart, hi, you know it's been a week already, bart. I don't know if you already can tell I'm going really fast.

Speaker 2: 1:06

The light changed yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:09

I have some wrinkles now, some gray hairs. This is just an audio-only episode, so people cannot see, unfortunately. Maybe like 2024, I'll be like all gray right.

Speaker 2: 1:21

We're kidding a bit, because we're recording all these intros in one go, indeed, indeed, indeed.

Speaker 4: 1:27

So we're still in the roots conf recaps right, so again, if you miss will be the the second one, the second mini episode where merilo interviews uh, one of our roots conf speakers indeed, and if you miss, if you missed last week's episode the roots conf is basically end of year event where we do knowledge, a lot of knowledge sharing, uh, from more employees, uh, some workshops, a lot of cool stuff of day there in a special venue as well. Um, and yeah, throughout the day I also grabbed a few people to talk about their presentations. So, if you're interested, feel free to check out the episode from last week from Tim and Ben Gen AI from Hype to Reality. But that's not what we're going to talk about today or what you're going to hear today. Today, we're going to talk about building charisma and confidence by Bram De Koster.

Speaker 4: 2:19

No yeah, I wasn't sure if I was pronouncing his last name, right, but anyways. So cool talk as well. A bit more on the communication part, which I also think is very, uh, I also think is very interesting. I also I also take a lot of interest in the communication part and I also think is a part that is often overlooked when you're thinking of technical skills, but, uh, I do think that it makes a big difference oh, definitely, yeah, I think um, especially in the field that we're in um, which is, uh, consultancy around ai data engineering platforms, um where communication skills are key right indeed, indeed, and I also think that, even for professionals, I do think that the ability to speak well and present well, I think, will also advance your career quite a bit Fully agree.

Speaker 4: 3:15

Yeah, the way you come across has a big like. Yeah, I think, in the end of the day is how you impact other people, right, how can you influence?

Speaker 4: 3:21

them and I think, even like, at the very least, being conscious of these things, true, true, that helps tremendously, and I think that is uh one of the things that uh bram talks about indeed indeed, so the talk was also, uh, on the book that he also, yeah, but I'm also shared and you're gonna hear in more detail that he's also someone that wanted to improve his public speaking, so there was also a book that he he read and he was able to extract some insights, like the comfort, presence, power, warmed, as the foundations of building charisma. Also defining charisma like some processes that you can follow to to overcome these things very actionable as well and, yeah, it was very interesting here from his perspective. You know what worked well, what didn't work well. Um, yeah, his perspective. There I think he brought some different point of view that I also very much enjoyed talking to him and with that, I'll let you with the episode. Thanks, y'all, enjoy the listen.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Till next time you have taste in a way that's meaningful to software people all righty.

Speaker 4: 4:31

So I'm here with bram still at the roots conf. How are you doing, bram?

Speaker 3: 4:36

I'm doing good. I just completed my presentation, so all the stress today is out. How did it go? It went very well, or it was very well received, I found. So I've got the cotton. Multiple compliments, so I think I did well, is it?

Speaker 4: 4:51

the first time you do a presentation.

Speaker 3: 4:54

Yeah, it's only my second RootsConf, so it is the first time I did a presentation.

Speaker 4: 4:59

How was the experience?

Speaker 3: 5:00

How did you find it? It's very nice because the people are all just your colleagues, so you can make your presentation a lot funnier. You can make it a bit lighthearted than you would with like a client presentation yeah, I also get a.

Speaker 4: 5:17

I also did a presentation early today and, uh, I also feel like it's a bit uh, it feels more like you're talking to friends, it's like internal. I think it's a the the pressure is not as high. I feel like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, that's true At least that's what I tell myself to calm my nerves, you know.

Speaker 3: 5:33

I'm like, yeah, it's fine, you have to say yourself something.

Speaker 4: 5:35

Yeah, yeah, cause I I tried to do um, uh, like not not I'm not doing live coding, but there was like um so maybe um for people that this is the first time.

Speaker 3: 5:56

This is your first time on the podcast, right? Uh, come on. What's up? You gotta come more. Yeah, sorry, I always think that I don't have anything interesting to say but I don't know we have. I guess I have to, just to show up show up, that's it.

Speaker 4: 6:07

Um well, your first time, so welcome thank you. Would you like to introduce yourself for the people that don't?

Speaker 3: 6:14

know you yet. Okay, so my name is Bram, or Bram de Koster, my full name.

Speaker 4: 6:19

You have a lot of Brams at Data Roots, right, thank you.

Speaker 3: 6:22

So Bram de Koster is the full name. I've been at Data Roots now for a year and a half, or close to two years if you count my master thesis which I've done at DataRoots. So that was like a joint program between the school and then DataRoots. Very nice, very fun environment to learn, in very fun environment to work. That's also why I stayed, I guess.

Speaker 4: 6:46

And who was your mentorship? Who was your mentor on the internship?

Speaker 3: 6:51

That would be Hans. That was back when there was still like the research team. So yeah, Virginie and mostly Hans was my and you still joined Data Roots after.

Speaker 4: 7:01

Nah, just kidding, hans is a good guy.

Speaker 3: 7:04

He's a very good guy, very smart, very nice to learn from him. The thesis was on ML Ops'm, mostly on data drift. I enjoyed it, but also not something that I was like, okay, this is what I want to do the rest of my life or something. I always am a person who is a bit more business minded, or that's what I'd like to be more business minded, so mlops is already heavy, heavy machine learning stuff. So that is a bit farther away from what I would really love to do. But up until now, when I started working, I started at EasyFares. Now I'm still at EasyFares and I have amazing colleagues there who can do amazing work and I get a lot of freedom to give my own input, to do a lot of different works to do a lot of freedom to give my own inputs to do a lot of different works and do a lot of different projects. I've actually just this week pushed my first model to production, so that's also a big step Congrats.

Speaker 4: 8:00

Let me see if I can get the right reaction. We get the right applause, but you get it. Good job, cool. Everything worked well.

Speaker 3: 8:12

It did crash, but the thing is.

Speaker 4: 8:14

But if it doesn't crash, it's not really your first, you know.

Speaker 3: 8:17

The thing is, one part of the model is to translate free user inputs through an LLM, and we use the Azure OpenAI LLM, so just the Azure version of ChatGPT. But the issue is some of the inputs aren't as clean or as nice words as you would want them to be, so sometimes the inputs just get flagged as like this is inappropriate. I will not translate this word.

Speaker 4: 8:46

Really.

Speaker 3: 8:46

And then it just ignores it, and then you get a fail, and is it?

Speaker 4: 8:50

too, sensitive.

Speaker 3: 8:51

I think it is too sensitive. For example, we do a lot of stuff. For example, it's related to what type of jobs people can have. So let's say you have your own butchery and people call it like I have a slaughterhouse, but the word slaughterhouse is already flagged because it's very violent in the eyes of the, so I'll have to take a look how I'll fix that.

Speaker 3: 9:16

I've heard today, actually from another colleague, that you could actually make these content filters yourself a bit. You can adjust them to like how sensitive you want them to be. I haven't looked into that yet.

Speaker 4: 9:27

That will be for next week. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Any fun facts, any hobbies, any personal dark secrets you want to share here, just for the internet.

Speaker 3: 9:37

Fun facts. So I am pretty good at baking, so it may be more a hobby than a fun fact okay, and how come you never brought anything?

Speaker 4: 9:45

I do bring quite a bit of stuff to the office, just just when I'm not there. I guess.

Speaker 3: 9:50

Wow, munya knows that I do bake quite a lot. I also started a new hobby, mainly golf. I tried it out a couple months ago and I've been hooked ever since. It is not the nicest hobby for your bank account, but it is fun to do so yeah cool, very cool so, and you presented at the roots club you mentioned what was your presentation about?

Speaker 3: 10:14

my presentation was on a book I read more than a year ago, I think it's uh, it's called the charisma myth by olivia fox cabane, so it's quite an extensive name. But the book really is about how can you be a more charismatic person and what's the benefits attached to being a more charismatic person. What are the wins you can get out of there?

Speaker 4: 10:35

okay and maybe, uh, do you have like a very tight definition of charismatic person or charisma and all these things?

Speaker 3: 10:46

um, yeah, so the way I put it in my presentation. If you really want a definition, it would be what Oxford, the Oxford Dictionary, just says, which is just like compelling attractiveness to inspire devotion into other people Can you say that one more time.

Speaker 3: 11:01

Compelling attractiveness to inspire devotion into other people. Okay, that's a bit there. I think it's true. Right, it's about, yeah, having that charm, having a bit of flow, being able to make people listen to you, make people inspired about what you say. But what I really want to stress a lot with the presentation is that if you want to be a charismatic person, it's not about you being this amazing speaker, but it's just about making the people around you feel like they are very important that's a nice message that the book sends.

Speaker 4: 11:34

And then, um, it's interesting to say that because when you first mentioned it, I was thinking that it's probably challenging the assumption that people are just born charismatic yeah, that's, indeed true that's also they also mentioned. So do they give you like tips or steps or anything for you to become a more quote-unquote, charismatic person?

Speaker 3: 11:56

So they do. So most of the book is on how to be a charismatic person. So the first thing you would do is actually just try to be comfortable so that you have a kind of baseline to work on.

Speaker 4: 12:10

That is already difficult, I mean I still. People sometimes get surprised when I say this, but I get very nervous a lot, yeah, yeah, I get it um, yeah, so maybe like okay, I understand that's the goal, but how do you get there?

Speaker 3: 12:24

yeah, so, they divide it into like two things. Let's say you have physical discomfort, so let's say there is right in here in the studio, there's like sun shining in your eyes. Of course that's annoying. That's already like it's shutting your eyes. It's making, but not in belgium, in belgium, no, of course. So let's say you're too cold, because that doesn't yeah, okay that is more likely.

Speaker 3: 12:44

Then you're, yeah, probably just shivering a bit, closing off. That's already making you not comfortable, making you less charismatic, because you can't hold an open body position that way, so that's bad. Then you want to fix that, either by preventing it, so wearing the right clothes, as they mentioned or you could try to fix it yeah, put on the heating, if you can put on a jacket, or at least say to the people that you're talking to like them it's cold in here that they don't take it personally. If you're very closed off, that's one thing, that's a bit the easy one, the easy thing. But what?

Speaker 3: 13:15

The first time I read the book, what really sticked with me was how they deal with like mental discomforts, which is like anxiety, self-doubt, all of these things, and it's like a whole process of. I can go into the entire process if you want. Yeah, yeah, so they do it in five steps. So the first step would be every time that you have like a negative id. Let's say you're just stressed about the presentation because it's very real for the both of us, I guess, or it was very real the first thing you would do is just try to see it as it is. You're just stressed. It's just a feeling of stress, it's not really reality, it's nothing special. Also, think about it as does the second step. Think about it as a human experience. Everyone is stressed before their presentation. A lot of people are there are so many people on dessert there will be most likely multiple people are at this very moment stressed for a presentation. Then the third step would be to neutralize it. Try to think of a way how you can. Yeah, they like to make it very visual. So, let's say, you could imagine your negative thoughts or your stress is like a radio channel and you could just tune with the knob to another channel. That's the way they see it. There are multiple ways you could do it. Um, you could also zoom out of yourself, if you can do it, and just try to see yourself as this small speck on the earth, and then it feels like a small issue being stressed.

Speaker 3: 14:38

The fourth thing would be like trying to put a positive twist on it. So let's say, because I'm stressed, I think of yeah, I think of my presentation a lot more and I think of certain ways to say some stuff and my presentation goes even better because I am a bit stressed that then you're giving it a positive twist and it doesn't stay negative in your mind. And finally, there is this like mental exercise, which you should do, and it's like you could imagine everything that's worried, that you're worrying about. It's like a weight on your shoulder and you can throw this weight to like an all knowing entity of God or the universe or fate, and this really it feels like. For me when I first read, it felt very strange, it felt fairly foreign. But yeah, if you give it a chance, it does help a bit, because it makes you for like maybe a second or two, it takes away all this stress and it makes your mind comfortable again.

Speaker 3: 15:33

So then you can focus again on what's important, namely like your presentation or whatever else you have to deal with.

Speaker 4: 15:40

Okay, cool. Maybe also one thing that helped me and I don't know if it's healthy, I'll just start by that. For me it was just like just do it, like I get very, I think. For me it's like I would get very nervous and very anxious, but I just do it and like, yeah, after a a while it kind of goes. I mean, it become you, you, it becomes more normal quote, unquote and because of that it like you don't, it's less daunting, right not sure if it's a healthy thing, but uh, I feel like that's also, so you just push through the stress

Speaker 4: 16:12

yeah, I just like tolerate the discomfort in general, right, I think it's like, yeah, I, I don't know, sometimes I commit to something and I think I will be more ashamed of like canceling last minute, you know, or I don't know I've done things, but like just kind of saying like the discomfort is there for me. For example, I try to commit to presenting something two days in advance, because then I was just stressed for two days in terms of the week, right, and I'll do it. And then, because then I was just stressed for two days into the week, right, and I'll do it. And then you kind of you know like, yeah, fine, you can move along, right, but, um, true, but I do.

Speaker 3: 16:43

I do similar things, like if I'm very stressed, I can be also like, okay, we'll just do it. No, no issue, just don't think about it and we'll push through. But yeah, I guess that's also a bit motivating, I would say, to like push yourself to get through these things.

Speaker 4: 16:57

I guess yeah, and I also think that maybe you can also argue that if I can push through it, it's not as like my anxiety is not as severe as someone else's right, yeah you can also make that point.

Speaker 4: 17:09

It's not like I'm a superman, right, like if it was. If it was as big of a deal to me as it is to john doe, then maybe I wouldn't have done it as well, right, I wouldn't be able to push through it. But okay, so you mentioned, like, being comfortable? Um, is that the main thing? Is there something else?

Speaker 3: 17:24

so getting comfortable is then the baseline. So where you would want to start out it, um, yeah, if you, then if you then continue so you can look into. So how they look at it is that's your charisma, or being charismatic is build up of like three traits, three building blocks which he wants to use. It would be being present, being like focused on the interaction that we're having would be very annoying. Let's say, if we're talking and I'm constantly on my phone looking at stuff, that's not a nice conversation. You want to be a bit powerful, like if you're talking, you want someone to listen to you and to do something with the information you tell them, and you also want to be warm, think about other people's like what they want, what they, what their best or their benefits are, not only think about yourself. So they. You have these three pillars which they build it up on, and then they give you a couple tips, a couple tricks, how to work on each of those pillars okay, interesting.

Speaker 4: 18:24

I feel like we I don't know if we have enough time to cover all the pillars, that's true, uh, but it seems it seems interesting. Also, you mentioned um being present. I think it's uh. I noticed that when I get very, very nervous in the beginning, like I remember I would, I would like. That was uh. When I was in my university in the us, I went to do a speech and I was very nervous also because it was like it was, I think, one of the first times that I was on a stage. It wasn't a lot of people, but like I was on a stage, there were professors, there was the dean of the universities, the colleges, but I just kind of gave my opinion. It was I wasn't talking like, for example, here at roots conf, I'm talking about a subject, right, so it's not really my opinion, it's like I'm just describing a natural occurrence phenomenon.

Speaker 4: 19:09

But I think on that speech I kind of had to give my perspective and they didn't give me very like. The guidelines were like like, yeah, just talk about X or Y. And I was like, oh, what should I talk? Oh, I think you do this. Then I think you should say how this. So it was really like very personal and I remember I was very stressed and I, because I was very stressed and very, very anxious I remember I went there and I gave the speech and I tried to put some like I wrote stuff and I put some jokes in there and I heard some laughter but as I stepped down I was like I don't remember what happened. I was, I completely checked out, you know, like I did it and people couldn't tell. So I think it's interesting you mentioned the, the being present, because to me it links a lot with stress yeah to me as well.

Speaker 4: 19:51

I mean, of course, I'm not gonna be on my like, provided that I'm not choosing to be on my phone. I'm not choosing to listen to music while I'm doing this, but the thing is I've done similar things.

Speaker 3: 20:00

So, for example, here you learn French quite young and I was always very bad at French. So what I would do is, when I had like an oral exercise, it would be just, I wrote all of the things, I let it be checked by my mom because she's very good at French, and then I would learn everything by heart. So if I have the exercise in front of the teacher, it would just be okay. Start, and in my mind I just envision the text and I just I just read it off as if it's in front of me. That's not a good way to give a presentation, right? Because yeah, it's true, you're. It's not like I'm not giving the talk, but I'm still not there.

Speaker 4: 20:35

I'm just focused on whatever is in my mind I'm not focused on the teacher around me and actually I think that also happened with me on that's the this story that I just told.

Speaker 4: 20:43

I remember I I was reading the story, like pacing around in my, my dorm room at the time, um, and I was like rehearsing it a lot because I was, but I think also because for me, a way to cope with being nervous is also being prepared, yeah, so I think it's like if you yeah, I don't know, I mean, there is some logic to it, right like if you, if you, you're not going to be nervous about riding the bike because you, you know you can do it, yeah, true, right, I think it's more the things that you're not confident on your skill, that you may be more nervous, but, uh, but, yeah, interesting, so being so, can you repeat again?

Speaker 4: 21:15

So it's like like being comfortable, being present, being warm and being powerful, and being powerful I think the powerful one is also I think I would also extrapolate a bit more it's just like any presentation, right, like any exchange of any exchange. Like we're having a conversation now and I think there is a if you exchange information, the being powerful, I think it's always a bit of a part of it, right. Like you always. Yeah, like if, if you, if everything you hear now or every like it just kind of gets thrown in the trash, then why are we doing this?

Speaker 3: 21:48

that's true yeah, it is, and it is also is something that yeah feels a bit difficult, because if you say, uh, be powerful, people think that you really have to be gonna go hit the gym. Yeah, be this general type, be very serious, but that's not really what it's about, right? It's about being confident in what you say, be convincing, being able to add value to whatever you're saying yeah, yeah, indeed, be relevant as well, right, like uh, okay and um so, and be warm as well.

Speaker 4: 22:18

I also think it's an interesting one because sometimes I notice that when people are doing presentations, I've noticed that sometimes well, I've noticed some people or some presentations the presentation is very focused on what do I want to say?

Speaker 4: 22:32

yeah but not as focused on what people want to hear. Actually, in the universities and in the lectures, I do feel a lot like that. Like I feel like it's like they have stuff that needs to regurgitate and then that's it right. Like in how, like if you were a student, like putting yourself in the shoes of the student you know how do you want to digest this information, how to make it interesting, how to make it engaging. A lot of the times for me, so for me, it's like if you tell me something, like that's also like if I do a course or a follow tutorial on a new framework, whatever, I have a bit of a hard time to follow through, because to me it's like, okay, I'm learning this now, but when I'm gonna use it?

Speaker 4: 23:17

yeah, right and I think if I, if I'm following the tutorial, because I like, if I'm doing something on my day-to-day and I have an issue and then I said, okay for this, follow this story to understand how to solve it, I'm gonna follow it way differently. I'm gonna be more uh, intentional about it, you know, because I also place a bit yeah, like I said to me, something is valuable if, um, if there's some utility to it, or the more utility the better. Yeah, right, and I think a lot of the times people, when doing presentations, they think a lot on what I want to say and not do. Why, why would someone care about this? Why people want to hear this right.

Speaker 3: 23:51

I think that might be also be a wrong way of thinking about it, because, yeah, like you said, if you have an issue day to day, you want to figure out, you're already looking for a solution. Well, if you're giving a presentation and people don't or they don't really grasp what it's about, you need to convince them, right. And there is where this warmth comes in a bit. It makes people like you more and, yeah, it makes you more convincing, right. If you were more likely, I guess, to believe what our friends will say or what someone you trust more says. And this warmth gives you a bit of trust back.

Speaker 4: 24:23

Okay. So, and, being warm, said that it's more like about uh, yeah, maybe, because I I think I know what you mean, but if you were to define, put it in words, how would you? The warmth yeah, um, if someone is warm, how can you tell someone is warm?

Speaker 3: 24:37

so being warm, I would say it's more about, yeah, making sure that they think about your interests as well, that they put themselves in your shoes. Yeah, the book defines it as compassion, I guess. So putting yourselves in someone else's shoes and thinking about their interests, a combination of those two, that's how they would define it. Cool, but I do agree with that approach. I don't think it's easy. I think it's hard to do with everyone If you have to be compassionate about every person you meet. It's not easy. Think it's hard to do with everyone if you have to be compassionate about every person you meet. It's not easy, right, it is. Yeah, it is something you have to work on yeah, it's almost like indeed, indeed, indeed, indeed.

Speaker 4: 25:13

So, um, if you had to sum her up to, to wrap it up, if you had to give someone advice, or you're talking to someone that they have a hard time public speaking, what are the top three or top five things that you would like them to remember? Or from this conversation, from your presentation, from reading the book, well, what would you say?

Speaker 3: 25:38

so I think so this is also coming from me, because I was someone who had a lot of difficulty with public speaking and presenting in general the first time I read the book. I think, when you actually look up, I think first of all, it's important to work on it and try to figure out, look up some resources on charisma. It can be the charisma myth, the book I read, but it can be anything else and what I think will happen is whatever you need will stick with you. That was that's what happened with me. That's why that five step process that I said before really stuck with me, because I had a lot of stress, a lot of mental, a lot of mental discomfort, so that stuck with me.

Speaker 3: 26:17

And then, if you're having difficulties, I would just, yeah, first of all think, think about what I said before, like it is just a common experience, it is something you'll get through. Everyone has stress, we all deal with it. And lastly, try to breathe also while you're speaking, because that's something I still struggle with, that you're just talking, talking, talking and you're focused on. Yeah, we don't like the presenting, so we want to get through it as fast as possible, but that makes it a lot worse for yourself and for the people listening.

Speaker 4: 26:47

So try to take that pause from time to time time to take time to breathe yeah, true, all righty cool, I think we well, we could dive in more and more and more, but I think that's all we have time for today okay, thank you for having me on thanks a lot. It's very indeed. You have a standing invitation to join us on the other episodes as well. Happy to yes, all right, thanks everyone, ciao, thank you.

Speaker 1: 27:14

You have taste in a way that's meaningful to software people.

Speaker 2: 27:20

Hello, I'm Bill Gates. I would recommend TypeScript. Yeah, it writes a lot of code for me and usually it's slightly wrong.

Speaker 1: 27:32

I'm reminded it's a rust here, rust. This almost makes me happy that I didn't become a supermodel. Cooper and Ness.

Speaker 3: 27:43

Well, I'm sorry guys, I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 1: 27:47

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about large neural networks. It's really an honor to be here. Rust, rust, rust Rust. Data topics. Welcome to the data. Welcome to the data topics podcast.