On Winning

So much glass… so much win.

I had an interesting thing happen yesterday – I won a trophy. I haven’t had that happen in decades. Literally.

I can’t even remember the last time I held a trophy or anything even close to it. At many different levels I have rejected the thought that they meant anything and that they were archaic ways of displaying success when other representations would fare much better.

But that idea was challenged recently with the Summer 2012 Olympics as I saw men and women sweat blood and tears for a round piece of metal that would hang from their necks. Yes, it’s much more than just that – it’s what it represented that mattered, but at the end of the day it was an award, a trophy, something physical that would gather dust overtime.

And so here I was, accepting an award via Atlanta’s Product Camp 2012 for “Best Presenter” among many other great presenters (and there were some very good presentations!). Perhaps a good portion of it had to do with the fact that I was a “Walk On,” meaning, I pitched the concept for the talk when I first got there and had zero preparation going into it.

But as luck would have it I was the #2 chosen talk to hear out of 42 and then I landed the largest room for a keynote preso that I hadn’t created yet.

Nothing like a little pressure, right?

But thankfully I was speaking about something that I’m incredibly passionate about and something that I live and breathe every single day. That always makes it easier to share, even if you’re put on the spot, since it’s simply sharing what you do day-in and day-out. Very little preparation needed, right?

And later that day there was a conference-wide vote on who was the best presenter and who had the best presentation. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the results! I had won something and that winning feeling has been something that is all to scarce.

In fact, I don’t feel like I win much at all, and haven’t in a very long time. Naturally this isn’t the Charlie Sheen-esque “winning” that I’m talking about because I do that every day by simply getting out of bed!

As a result I’m still processing the idea. The neat-looking trophy is sitting on my desk as I type this and I’ve been staring at it blankly for quite some time now.

My wife’s reaction was priceless: She just looked at it, up at me, and then shook her head a bit, smirked and gave me a fist-bump. I nearly died.

I appreciate it, for sure, and I love Product Camp and the people that I got to meet, but I’m not sure I’m completely head-over-heels-in-love with this piece of hardware on my desk. I’m just not sure how to interpret it at all!

In any case I’d love to hear your thoughts. When was the last time you “won” anything like this? Are there opportunities in your line of work for you to get stuff like this? What would you do with it? I don’t golf or play any competitive sports so I don’t have a medal case or anything like that…