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Hey guys, my name is Nick Quaranto and I am an addict. I'm also an addict to lame jokes,
and I'm an addict to Twitter. Who uses Twitter? Oh my god! I'm at home! So, you guys have
probably heard of this thing called the fail whale, it's this whale that pops up when the
site is really getting hit by users, and it happens all the time because that site sucks.
And supposedly, I have the first saying of it, so there's my hook. I sort of coined the
fail whale, although I don't have any money. I'll take donations. Besides this, I'm going
to talk about who I am, why I'm here, and why I suck. I grew up in Buffalo. I'm a huge
Bills and Sabres fan. I don't care how many times they lost the Super Bowl or the Stanley
Cup, I'm always gonna be there. I know where to tell you to get the best wings. It's La
Nova's, either downtown or there's one in Williamsville. All the wings and pizza here
stinks, sorry guys that live in Rochester. I'm a CS and Software Engineering major. I'm
a fifth year, so I'm almost out of here, I'm going to Boston afterwards, I got a job at
a sweet place in downtown Boston. By trade, I guess I am a web developer, I'm currently
obsessed with the language called Ruby. I program way too much according to my girlfriend.
I also do a lot of open source work. I started and contribute to a lot of open source projects,
which has led me into a lot of public speaking. I think my first real class experience, actual
professional experience, was in the Public Speaking class, which was one of the most
enjoyable classes I've had here at RIT. There's some brown on my nose. That was really great,
and after that I started talking at user groups, both here in Rochester and when I went out
to Boston. It sort of went from there, I talked at RubyConf, which is a conference in San
Francisco a few months ago, I think in May, and I got invited to speak at another conference
that's right after graduation, so that should be cool. So, I guess people would say I have
a lot of experience, at least here, I don't think I have a lot of experience. We'll see.
People say I'm engaging. I think I'm good off little material. I think by now I have
a rhythm down of creating a presentation, getting the notes for it, and eventually I
become not dependent on notes like these. I think now I'm really good at standing up
in front of people. That was not always the case. I remember a horrible story, I'm gonna
to get really personal and embarrassing here. I was in third grade and I had to give a speech
about, er, I had to recite a poem, I think it was about trains, and I just broke down
in front of everyone. I don't even remember it, I was crying, it was bad. I went to the
hot seat. It was a Catholic school. As for weaknesses, I'm really fidgety, I'm probably
shaking right now. I do get nervous. I say um way too much, and there's a word I'm never
gonna say in a speech again, I need to write it. There we go. Never gonna to say that word
again in a speech because I gave a speech, they recorded it, and I said that like 10
times. I'm also really bad with questions. Another funny story. At the end of one of
my talks, people asked me questions, and my advice is to always repeat the question. This
guy, he asked me a question, I immediately just shot out an answer, and it was completely
embarrassing and everyone laughed. It didn't work out that well. As for outcomes, I really
am considering this like a bootcamp or training type stuff for the conferences I'm going to
from here on out. I think it will be really good because I'm sort of focused on tech presentations
right now, and I think getting more general skills will be better. I think engineers and
computer science people in general are bad at communication, including myself. Anything
I can do to enhance that skill is a good thing. For the rest of this quarter I hope we have
a great, amazing, wonderful, splendid, and stupendous time.