Well, not my first talk ever, but my first one since starting Afterthought. I’ve been itching for an opportunity to present some of my ideas to a larger audience, and even though public speaking scares me to death I still try to get as much practice as possible. It’s just too good of a skill not to have.

This Thursday I’ll be giving a brief presentation on the art, science, and frustration of elevator pitches. I hate hate hate using marketingspeak (especially the term “elevator pitch”…it sounds so cheesy), but I just can’t think of a better catchphrase. If you come up with one, you know where to find me.

The talk is part of the brand new Ultra Light Startups NYC meetup. To my knowledge this is a brand new term that we just made up, and we’re using it to describe the complete outsourcing of a product’s development–everything but the idea itself, of course. The ultra light approach is critical to a new product called Hirefly which I’ll soon be releasing into the wild, and I can’t wait to connect with a few other like-minded individuals.

A brief description of the meetup itself:

- Mutual support for maximally outsourced entrepreneurs
- A gathering of entrepreneurs sharing best practices for launching prototype concepts in the most lightweight way possible.
- The focus is on launching “quick and dirty” proof of concept ventures (websites, Facebook apps, mobile apps, etc) using outsourced talent, open-source/off-the-shelf software components, virtual/cloud computing services, and minimal capital.

If you’ve got that itch to work on a great idea but aren’t sure how to start executing, this meetup’s for you. All the gory details and more on the official Facebook group.