Not Shouting into the Aether After All
A Year of "Tacos & Topics"
July 31, 2026
This week, EverDriven held its second annual company summit. I was ready for two days of listening, asking questions, and thinking about how what I heard could be affected by what I do (and vice versa).
Then the unexpected happened. The day before, I was asked to give my recent lunch-and-learn presentation on the second day of the event. Before the entire tech organization.
Flash back to a year (or 51 weeks) ago. On the recommendation of a mentor, I hosted my first lunch-and-learn: “The Norman Door Problem: Why UX Design Matters More Than You Think.” It became the first in a series I lovingly dubbed “Tacos & Topics,” which covered UX and tech topics, lighthearted personal interest topics (3D printing and game jams), and even cross-functional talks. I recruited speakers, managed the schedule, and gave about half of the 17 talks we’ve hosted so far.
When I started Tacos & Topics, I was aiming for visibility. UX touches so many people at EverDriven, yet many of them don’t know what it is. I wanted to change that. I wanted to dust off the presenting skills I developed in high school theater and Pendulum New Music concerts. I wanted to take complex, technical topics and refine them for a less technical audience.
The last year has been a series of challenges, ups, and downs. From scheduling headaches and last-minute presentations to sessions with bare-bones attendance to great sessions that left attendees energized. It’s been a joy to bring this series to life at EverDriven.
I started my Norman Door talk a nervous wreck — my hands shook, I had to consciously remind myself to slow down, I laughed nervously… but I got through it. People better understood UX - even though we had a couple of incidents where people walked into Norman doors afterward!
Each talk felt stronger, each presentation got tweaked, but I struggled to foster genuine interaction. I started laughing at myself less, but instead traded it for self-deprecating (or product-deprecating) jokes and comments. I kept looking for topics I could talk about knowledgeably and kept refining how I presented information on my slides. Every lunch-and-learn session was recorded for the company, but I never knew if they were watched or if we were just shouting into the aether.
Awareness of Tacos & Topics was floundering. People weren’t aware that they were still happening when others expressed a desire for monthly talks. I started worrying about the series’ permanence — what would happen to the program when I eventually left?
Last week, I talked about “Whose Reality Are We Building For?” — personas and what they can do for us. It was the second-smallest session we’d ever had, and two of the three attendees had helped edit the presentation. It was a good presentation, with positive comments about the interaction beats (guessing games and discussions). I posted the recording and moved on.
Then I got the message. Our product leader had watched the video and loved it. “Whose Reality Are We Building For?” was going to summit, with a couple of tweaks to make it more appropriate for the tech organization.
To my amazement, I didn’t spend the time leading up to it overthinking. My hands were steady, my breath was slow. I walked to that screen with confidence, and stood in front of the largest audience I’ve ever presented to, a room several times bigger than any Tacos & Topics presentation: peers, leadership, even one of the stakeholders who helped start the series. And, aside from some technical difficulties with an unfamiliar projector, the talk landed. People engaged with the interaction points, even relating to the examples I gave. People laughed. Conversation about personas was fostered. One attendee sent me a message connecting my topic to another.
The series became a small topic of discussion: “Do we need monthly talks?” “Wait — doesn’t Kayla already host those?” “Actually, we host them twice a month!” (Which led to a joke about my running out of topics to talk about.)
Tacos & Topics celebrates its one-year anniversary next week (and I still have to write a presentation!). I’m still worried about its future, but that might never change. What has changed is how I approach it, and, I hope, how people will interact with it going forward.