Tag: speaking
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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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Dignity, Always Dignity
One of the interesting parts of being a semi-public figure by doing DevRel is that it makes you think a lot about how you look to other people, in a way I suspect is not a concern for the ordinary developer. It parallels the doubled perception that a lot of women already experience. In 1972,…
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Construct, Capable, Confident
I can’t make it parallel. I tried. We just have to live with an imperfect world of non-parallel headline items. I was talking to another speaker the other day, and she asked me how I knew I was ready to give a talk. As with so many other things in my life, I have a…
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Well, that didn’t go like I imagined
The Toggle Talk As a speaker, there are three things I count on to give a talk: Slides Narrative flow Speaker notes My dependence on these elements decreases as I give a talk multiple times, but I use the slides to help me remember where I am in the narrative even if I don’t refer…
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2017 Speaking Recap
This was the year that I got more organized as a speaker. I took up Airtable as a way to track all of my conference proposals, and so I actually have a record of everything I submitted. Summary Attended 27 conferences, spoke at 24 Spoke at 3 user groups, 2 podcasts, 1 video interview, 1…
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Nothing gold can stay
This month marks the end of two organizations that were really important to me, and I want to tell you about them. Alterconf Alterconf was a conference series that happened all over the world. The organizing spirit was Ashe Dryden. She took all her experience with the tech industry, gaming, and conferences, and used it…
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Packing, optimizing, and satisficing
I’m off on a two-week trip that happens to be broken by an 18 hour stop at home. (Nodevember, North Bay Python, SpringOne Platform, LaunchDarkly writing sprint). Every couple months, I try to clean out my bags entirely, get rid of the trash that accumulates, make sure that I have room for all the new…
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Talk slides are not a presentation deck
This year, I watched a talk called “I’m Judging Your Slides” or something like that. I watch a lot of conference talks. No, more than that. As if it were my full-time job, which it pretty much is. 25 conferences x 2 days (rough average) x 6 talks a day. Plus recorded talks. As such:…
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Why I Speak at Developer Conferences
I don’t write code for a living, and I never have. Developer has never been part of my job titles, and my Github history won’t impress anyone. I think that’s why people are surprised that I speak at developer conferences — next month I’m going to RubyConf, PyconCA, and Nodevember. When I started speaking at…
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Lady Conference Speaker Talk Wrap-Up
I was talking to Bridget Kromhout about her wrap-up process, and she inspired me to a) do a better job publishing my talk information right after I give it, b) talk about my end-of-talk process. So, you have pitched a talk, gotten it accepted, written it, gotten on stage and given it, and answered any…