Dear new developer,
When I was newer to development, I thought that conference speakers were experts in their area, harbored no doubts, and that they knew exactly what they were doing. Speaking about technology seemed scary (until it wasn’t).
I enjoyed this post, “Confessions of a Conference Speaker”, pulling back the veil on the experience of a prolific tech conference speaker–20 talks in 2019. (She also has a post about being a conference attendee.)
I particularly enjoyed this section, titled “The Audience is Rooting for You”:
People come to conferences and attend your talk with the hope of getting value for their time. But that’s what is important to remember. They WANT to have chosen a good talk. They WANT you to succeed!
Being a speaker can be nervewracking for any number of reasons. There is so much prep that goes into it. Not every talk will go perfectly. But it helps to remember that the audience is rooting for you. This is especially true with those live coding mistakes. They’ll enjoy helping out 🙂
And the tips about a tech check and adding your author info on every slide were spot on based on my limited experience.
I can’t recommend public speaking enough for a a way to level up your skills. It can be terrifying, but you’ll learn:
- how to dig into a topic
- how to present something in a coherent fashion
- the confidence of knowing that you (likely) know more than anyone else in the room on this topic
- the value of connecting to your peers
If you are considering doing a talk, I’d suggest starting at a meetup or a lightning talk at a conference. Read the whole post to get Laurie’s inside view.
Sincerely,
Dan
Letters To A New Developer 