I presented to 7,000 people by way of a smaller studio audience, a live broadcast stream, and two time-delayed streams set for reasonable areas covering our offices in the rest of the world. It wasn't long, but it was important. First time for me. I've been a profound stuttered my whole life. It comes and goes — after my first year in college, it's never been as bad as it was from, say, third grade through freshman year, though it will rear its head unpredictably. There's this thing, though: I have these huge, powerful engines of language, constantly churning in my head, calculating different, alternative paths through words and phrases in case I hit a brick wall. Unfortunately, I let them consume so much of my cognition that by the time I got to my final slide, they'd pushed everything I was going to say out of my head. It was an image, with no words to cue me; I had a tiny post-it note in the palm of one hand, but it didn't help. Before the moment extended and became awkward, I wrapped with a thanks and stepped down. There were some great things I could've said in those final moments. It wasn't a failure, though it was a lost opportunity. Still, it hit me deep in my chest that my fear of stuttering was now having a much greater impact on my life than actually stuttering. Truth be told, if I'd have stuttered, no one would've cared. And I'm not in high school anymore, haven't been for twenty years. If someone had decided to make something out of it, it would reflect poorly on them, not me. So today, I'm glad to say I'm no longer afraid of stuttering. That's worth so much more than any other triumph over my stutter. Thank you for listening.