Category: Best practices
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Conference Organizing: It’s your party
I have a couple blog posts on conferences, including one on hosting a booth, one on diversity and inclusion, and one on Think Globally, Sponsor Locally I haven’t put together one about what I hope for from conference organizers, though. Disclaimers Every conference, even the massively well-funded ones, is the result of a lot of meetings…
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Lady Conference Speaker: Speaker Bios
It’s hard to say nice things about yourself, even in the third person. Here are some tips!
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I’d like to introduce you to…
One of the skills that I’ve been learning in this new Developer Advocate position is the letter of introduction, which is a close relative of the sales version (the warm handoff) and the recruiting version (letter of reference), but isn’t exactly like either of them. I think “Letter of Introduction” is actually a little unclear,…
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A Parable of the Polar Vortex
The best time to shovel your driveway is immediately after it snows, but failing that, any time before you have driven on it. Driving on fresh-fallen snow compacts it into something between “ice” and “pure evil”, depending on the temperature, humidity of the air, humidity of the snow, etc. I just went out and shoveled…
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The Art of Booth
I originally wrote this up as an internal blog post, but I think it may be useful for other people, too, so I’ve cleaned it up a bit and taken out most of the proprietary stuff, and added some explanations. I had never in my life done boothwork before this job, so I was surprised…
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Lady Conference Speaker Dress-up
Colored hair has never disrupted my ability to do my highly-visible, public job, either. Almost every form of dress code you can think of is about asymetrical respect – the less powerful person is forced to comply with power’s standards of hair/clothing/expression. https://t.co/yB5RGz9JpD — Heidi from LaunchDarkly (@wiredferret) January 15, 2019 I look like this:…
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Speaker’s Hierarchy of Needs
I’ve been thinking about what I need to be a happy speaker, and what I expect, and what I hope for, and it seems to me like it’s a a hierarchy of needs, like Maslow. This is absolutely not intended to “call out” any organizer or make anyone feel bad. The vast majority of my…
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Stickers, A Love Story
When I was in elementary school, I won a science fair, and travelled to the far-off land of Moscow, Idaho for the state competition. While there, I spent some of my food money on the most magical sticker ever. It was a gleaming metallic unicorn with rainbow colored mane and tail. It brought me joy…
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Saying No, or If This Then Not That
I had to say no to a conference I would have loved to speak at today. I’ve had to say no to several conference speaking offers this year, because it turns out that time, space, and timezones can only be manipulated to a certain degree. I thought about not blogging about this, because it’s a…
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Praise is a vitamin
I was thinking about how happy I am when I get the kind of praise I need. It doesn’t make me feel smug or complacent, it makes me feel strong and empowered and like what I’m doing matters and is seen. Which is kind of the opposite of burnout. I don’t think you can entirely…