This week I attended CESSE’s ACCESSE26 conference in Raleigh and presented a session on onboarding. It was my first time presenting this material in person, and it reminded me why live presentation is still my preferred way to communicate, even though I write a blog every Wednesday.

I’ve been writing this blog for over a year now. I get occasional comments on the blog and on LinkedIn, but most weeks I’m chucking my words across the transom and hoping something lands. I write the post, I publish it, and then I have almost no way to know whether it worked.

A room full of people is different. Questions come during the session or right after. I can see when the audience is restless and when they are rapt. None of those signals exists when I hit publish on a blog post.

If live presentation is what I actually prefer, why blog instead of doing a podcast or video series, which would get me closer to that same oral, in-the-room format? Two reasons. The technical setup for podcasting or video is a barrier for me. And I don’t like hearing my own voice played back. Writing avoids both problems.

I’ve gotten drafting the weekly blog post and LinkedIn companion down to about forty-five minutes, using AI as part of the process. I get my ideas out in a rough draft first, without worrying about grammar or spelling. I can even dictate it (one of my life’s regrets is never taking a typing course so my writing is typo-laden). I ask AI to polish that draft. Then I go back through and cut the filler AI adds, turning it back into something that sounds like me.

Forty-five minutes is manageable given everything else on my plate right now. The job is still new (and probably will feel new for the first year). I’m combining households with my husband. I’m moving out of Maryland for the first time in thirty years. And I’m getting my daughter ready to leave for college in the UK.

None of that is going away tomorrow, but it will ease. When it does, I want to put some of that time back into live formats instead of only writing. Early in this blog, I ran a live video course, and I enjoyed it more than almost anything else I’ve done here. I’d also welcome the chance to show up on someone else’s platform instead of always publishing on my own. If you run a blog, a podcast, or anything else where a conversation about onboarding or first-year leadership would fit, I’d like to hear from you.