I gave my first-ever talk last October, at MCT Summit Japan in 2025. I am writing about it now, months later, because the part that stays with me is not the talk itself but how much a few small things made it easier. If you are staring down your own first presentation, I hope some of this helps.

It started with a chance meeting.

At the North America MCT Summit in Seattle in March 2025, I got to talking with one of the people behind an MCT event in Japan. I mentioned that Japan was already on my list for the year, and said how perfect it would be if the dates happened to line up. It was the kind of thing you say out loud while giving it only a small chance of ever happening. A few months later, the call for presentations went out. I applied, I was accepted, and the conference landed squarely inside my planned October vacation. Sometimes the stars do align.

I shared a quick note about all of this on LinkedIn right after. But it was my first time speaking, and I wanted to take the time to write about it fully, and to share what I actually learned from being a first-time presenter.

Two firsts at once

This was my first IT presentation. Ever. And it was at the first MCT Summit Japan, held at the Microsoft Japan headquarters in Shinagawa. The summit ran Saturday and Sunday, and I presented on the Sunday. I flew into Tokyo the night before, leaving with a few hours of sleep.

The talk

My session grew out of a post I published earlier in the year, Things I Learned From One Year of M365 Migrations: more than 50 migrations in 16 months, structured around three phases, Preparation, Cutover, and Stabilize.

For the stage version, I leaned harder into the failures, because those are the stories people actually remember. The old M365 tenants a client set up through GoDaddy years ago and forgot about. The user principal names that quietly turn into random alphanumeric strings mid-cutover if you remove a domain the wrong way. The SaaS integrations and mail-flow dependencies nobody mentions until Day 1. The message underneath all of it is the same one I keep relearning: invest heavily in discovery, and then budget time and calm for the surprise you did not plan for. A successful migration is not a flawless cutover. It requires teamwork. Project managers are worth their weight in gold. And in the case you don't have one, adopt the mantra "Be annoying." Raise every risk and double-check everything.

Nervous, and in exactly the right room

I will not pretend I was not nervous. This was my first time presenting professionally, and what made me nervous was wanting to be sure that what I said actually had value and resonated with the room. Standing in front of a live audience, with a remote one watching too, is a very different thing from writing a blog post.

But if I had to choose a place for a first talk, I could not have picked a better one. The MCT community was so supportive. People genuinely wanted me to do well, and you could feel it in the room. That is the difference between white-knuckling your way through and actually enjoying yourself up there. For anyone putting off their first talk out of nerves, I would say this: the room matters, and this was the right room.

Two other things made my first time easier than I expected, and both are worth seeking out if you get the choice. The first is that my audience was small. A packed hall would have been a lot for a first-timer, but a smaller room felt like a conversation, not a performance. The second is that I got to watch other people present before it was my turn. Sitting in the audience for a few sessions first, I got a feel for the pace, the room, and how relaxed good presenters actually are. By the time I stepped up, it felt familiar rather than foreign. If you can arrange your first talk so it is a small audience and not the very first session on the schedule, do it.

The whole session was recorded. If you would like to watch it, it is up on YouTube.

What I did not expect to gain as an attendee

I went to Japan to present, but I came home with just as much from sitting in the audience. MCT Summit Japan was a genuine community event.

I sat in on sessions about driving Copilot adoption, including using the ADKAR change framework and even building your own Ikigai with generative AI. There was a sharp talk on lessons from 18 months of Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry training worldwide, with a point that stuck with me: start with the business problem, then show the technical solution, not the other way around. There were even practical sessions on building a YouTube audience and using LinkedIn well as an MCT. Presenting is one thing. Getting to learn next to people doing the same work all over the world is another.

What I would tell a first-time presenter

I walked off the stage with a list of things to do better next time. Here it is, because the gap between "I know how to present" and actually presenting only closes once you are up there.

1. Use the microphone. All the time. Including when you repeat a question back.
2. Repeat every question before you answer it. It makes sure the remote audience actually hears it, and it buys you a few seconds to think.
3. Watch the chat. A hybrid audience is asking questions there too, and it is easy to forget them when you are focused on the room.
4. Build a slide outline that flows naturally but leaves room for a small detour. Rigid decks make for stiff talks.
5. Actually memorize your slide order. Knowing what is coming next lets you look up and talk to people instead of down at your notes.
6. Find more ways to get the room involved. Not just questions. Ask people to guess at something. Participation beats a monologue every time.

None of these are profound. All of them are things I only fully understood with a live and remote audience in front of me.

Worth it

This was one of the best professional experiences I have had. If you are an MCT and a summit shows up on your calendar, submit the talk. Worst case, you learn a lot as an attendee. Best case, you end up presenting in Tokyo.

And when I was not at the conference, I was seeing the rest of the country. If you want the travel side of the same trip, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, I wrote about that over at Random Travel Notes.