Well, it has happened. For the first time I have given a talk outside of my own university and in front of people that I don't actually know. Yet! Since this has been a "first time" for me, and probably will be for every single PhD student, why not talk about it. # What Happened? Well, every semester my university, the TU Dresden, organizes, together with universities close by, a little seminar. There one speaker from every partaking university should give a 30-40 minute research talk with the aim of getting to know the people working in your immediate vicinity. And this time I was not supposed to give a talk there, actually my office mate was asked to "represent" us this semester. But, he got pretty sick, basically right before the seminar. And other than him only me and our organizing professor where going. So me and our professor decided as that I could give the talk I also gave in defense of my masters thesis. I have to say, pretty short notice, but I was confident in doing an okay job and I still had a whole day to prepare! :D # The Trip I am gonna say something surprising here maybe, but it went well all around. Even though the weather was absolutely not being kind to my friends over at Deutsche Bahn. I am talking thick snow already on the ground and more coming from top, combine that with noticeable but not insane wind speeds, and I was thinking there were gonna be problems all around. There really weren't, at least for me. So thank you fr traveling with Deutsche Bahn I guess, this time with less sarcasm than normally. It was cold and snowy, but other than cold feet on the way back I really cannot complain too much. # What Did I Talk About? My masters thesis revolved around the concept of linearization in the theory of dynamical systems. It concerns, roughly speaking, under what conditions can we, to a given nonlinear dynamical system, associate a linear dynamical system which behaves in the same way. The fundamental theorem in this field is the celebrated Hartman-Grobman theorem, which says, that under a spectral condition Lipschitz perturbations of a linear system are isomorphic. It was originally proven independently in '59/'60 by Hartman and Grobman for autonomous differential equation. In the following decades the result was extended to much harsher world of non-autonomous dynamics. At the same time the notion of non-autonomy was extended to the more general notion of so called skew-product flows, and while massively developed, it did not seem to happen, that these worlds ever crossed. And when my professor and me noticed that, we thought well that might still be possible there. And indeed that was what my thesis is about. A notion of linearization of skew-product, which has existed before, and a skew-product Hartman-Grobman theorem, which hasn't. # How It Went Since I was working with a very short preparation time obviously the talk could have been more confident. I was kind of hum and haw-ing throughout, enough that I actually noticed at least. I misspoke a couple of times and was a bit too fast I feel like, but overall? I think it went well. The professor traveling with me said I did good, I got some compliments from listeners. I am overall happy with my performance. I am aware that the talk my colleague would have been giving, if he hadn't gotten sick, but that might not be the healthiest thinking. # The Aftermath After I gave my talk and the other talks ended the actual reason we met began, networking! Although I had a difficult time at the start. I had the ominous feeling like I was, by far, the dumbest person in the room and that everyone knew this was the case. That is of course a stupid thing to think about in the first place and a kind of thinking I am normally able to avoid. That feeling kind of fixed itself after a group of people probably noticing my self-consciousness gave me some compliments about my talk and about my slides. That really helped. It in fact helped so much that I got the confidence to ask another speaker at that event about what he talked about and got a very nice conversation and a couple of great references regarding the kinds of things I am currently interested in. This is the experience I actually hoped to get from this event, the kinds of pointers and references simple googling and asking AI will not get you. The true reason on why I do not believe AI to be anything close to being revolutionary in the academia. The learned, almost folklore-esque knowledge you only find and know through community. And that wasn't even it! On the way back I had a long talk with another professor and after a long exposition he invited me and my boss to think about a problem that occurred to him some time ago. Which feels great you know. A random professor I have met twice in my life giving me a potential future cooperation opportunity after I gave a single talk. This is great!