Getting into public speaking at conferences
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My experiences and tips on submitting talks and public speaking at conferences, for the London Clojurians meetup August 2016
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Getting into public speaking at conferences
- 1. Getting into Public Speaking Its really fun, especially when you don’t think about it
- 3. Why speak?
- 4. Speaking Benefits ● Career development ○ Good way to demonstrate your experience and soft skills ○ Helps you evaluate the level of your own understanding (builds confidence) ● Learn more ○ Preparing for a talk help you learn new things ○ Giving a talk and receiving feedback also helps you learn new things ● Conferences & Events are even more fun ○ Usually get free conference tickets (sometimes for a friend too) ○ Travel paid (usually if you are a key speaker or could otherwise not attend) ○ People will ask your advice
- 5. Barriers to speaking ● Imposter syndrome ○ You simply feel that you do not have anything interesting to say ■ This happens a lot, even to seasoned speakers ■ Everyone has lots of experiences to share though ● Lack of experience ○ You have never done any public speaking, so you feel you could not do it. ■ Catch 22. Start of with the simplest possible thing, an informal talk at work, a short talk at a meetup, etc ● Lack of time ○ You are simply too busy ○ It takes time to prepare & give a presentation ■ All this time spent benefits your career & usually your company too
- 6. My speaking history ● Started at University ○ Hated the idea of giving a final year project presentation, it felt awful ■ Had spend days going over what I wanted to say ■ Had spent hours practising & was incredibly nervous ■ Surprised to find it was voted the best presentation ● Started work at a consultancy, including 5 day training workshops ○ Very nervous for a long time until I became more familiar with the content ■ Essentially re-wrote all the training material, made it more practical and full of examples ■ Started to enjoy writing content, as it made it easy to present ● Worked in Finance, giving lots of presentations to different groups of people ○ Helped me empathise and consider what they wanted to know ● Increasingly active in the community, leading to giving lots of talks ● Became a developer advocate / evangelist...
- 7. Applying to Speak Tips for CfP’s, getting noticed, etc.
- 8. Replying to a Call for Papers (CfP) Call for Papers is a common way to find speakers for a conference - The conference website should provide details of the process, timings & code of conduct - You may only get notified if you are accepted to speak Typically you will submit ● Title - gets the initial attention of the conference organisers ● Abstract - sells the talk to the organisers ● Bio - should give organisers confidence that you have some experience with the subject, usually included a picture
- 9. How often should I apply ? ● Is it bad to submit more than one talk to a conference ? ○ No, submit as many different talks as you like ■ (more than 10 may be over-doing it though) ● Is it bad to submit the same talk to more than one conference ? ○ No, submit your talk to as many conferences as you like ■ Ensure the conference topics & themes are relevant to your talk though ● Is it bad to spend a big chunk of your time speaking at conferences ○ No, some people actually get paid to do this ○ Unless you read speaker notes word for word, your talks will be different each time anyway ○ If you are on the speaker circuit then you usually have several talks you can just give at short notice.
- 10. Writing a good title Writing good titles is hard & takes practice A good title should be clear and to the point Write down as many versions of a title as you can then pick the best. Ask other people which titles they like. If you are unsure about the title, write the abstract first
- 11. Examples: Bad Titles Clojure.spec | Clojure.spec is awesome | What I did with Clojure.spec - Too vague. What about it? What do you want to say about this subject
- 12. Examples: Good Titles (subjective) Effective testing with Clojure.spec & generative tests Persisting data as EDN types in Datomic How FundingCircle are guiding developers into Clojure
- 13. Tips on writing good titles ● Write down as many variations of the titles first, then delete the ones that are not so good until you only have one left ● Would the title make a good article / blog / newspaper title ? ● Show the titles to others and ask them ● Review the title once you have finished the abstract (if not during writing it)
- 14. Exercise: Write a few talk titles Please use the shared Google doc, linked to from the Meetup event
- 15. Writing a good abstract Needs to convey what the talk is all about ● What specifically will you learn ? ● Why is it valuable to learn about this ? ● How are you going to help us understand what you are talking about ? ● What level of skill / experience do you require ? ●
- 16. Exercise: Write an abstract (or two) Please use the shared Google doc, linked to from the Meetup event
- 17. Writing a good bio Make it short and to the point and full of any useful information relevant to the event - Blog posts, books or previous speaking appearances (dont promote other conferences in your bio though) Example: short & to the point Speaker, author, conference organiser & community obsessed developer. Loves Clojure, Emacs, Cats, Cycling & Agile development http://jr0cket.co.uk Tip: Look at the bio’s from other speakers from a previous years conference, or similar event.
- 18. Creating an effective digital presence ● Body of work ● Social media ● Detailed history ● Consistent branding Related articles: http://jr0cket.co.uk/categories/community/
- 19. Exercise: Write a bio for yourself Please use the shared Google doc, linked to from the Meetup event
- 20. Speaking at London Clojurians ● meetup.com/london-clojurians - send a message to the organisers ● London-clojurians.org - post a message to the mailing list ● clojurians.slack.com - post a message to #clojure-uk ● Tweet me at @jr0cket Related articles: http://jr0cket.co.uk/2016/07/Call-for-Speakers-London-Clojurian-conference-2016.htm l
- 22. Clojurian Community in Person Probably the most active language-specific developer communities in London
- 24. Traditonal Slides approach ● Powerpoint, Keynote or Google Slides ○ Simple to use and if you pick a nice theme they they look okay ■ Avoid making them over complicated ■ Download copies if using an online service (don't rely on conference wifi) ■ Minimise bullet points (ie. don't use this presentation as an example, it's not great)
- 25. Traditional slides approach ● Powerpoint, Keynote or Google Slides ○ Simple to use and if you pick a nice theme they they look okay ■ Avoid making them over complicated, as this wastes time ■ Minimise bullet points (ie. don't use this presentation as an example, it's not great) ○ Google slides & online services are handy if you laptop dies… ■ Download copies if using an online service (don't rely on conference wifi)
- 26. Modern slides approach ● Prezzi & Reveal.js (also org-reveal for Emacs) ○ Offer different presentation options, but require more work or initial setup Reveal.js examples at: http://jr0cket.co.uk/slides/
- 27. Workshop approach ● Gitbook.io, readthedocs, Jekyll ○ Really useful services for creating good looking workshop content ■ Create content in markdown, asciidoc or reframed text Gitbook example: https://practicalli.gitbook.io/clojure ReadTheDocs example: https://cider.readthedocs.io See my article on
- 28. Demo / Live coding ● Demos ○ Seeing something in action is very engaging for the audience ■ Avoid making it a boring product pitch though ■ Create something real, even if you have to pre-create some aspects ■ Create a video backup when you are practicing, just in case the demo gods are angry ● Live coding ○ A great way to explore a language or programming concepts ■ Make sure people understand the syntax you are using ■ Create the code at a good pace, not so slow to make it boring, not to fast that it cannot be followed. ○ Don't do this, its just asking for trouble, unless ■ You practice so often you can type while you are talking (very hard, try it) ■ You have most of the code pre-written ■ You use Git to step through branches, commits or tags
- 30. Make sure people can see your content ● Display your slides / code and go stand at the back of the room ○ Tweak the size of your fonts and colours of your themes ■ Ensure you know how to quickly increase the font size ■ If your editor has profiles, create a demo / presentation one with ~24px font ● Ask the audience if they can see okay ○ It helps you engage with them and see how awake they are
- 31. Talk to the Audience ● Obvious statement, but easy to forget ● Make eye contact, but don’t stare ○ Make eye contact for several seconds with several members of the audience during your talk ■ Helps you understand how well the talk is going ■ Helps you connect to the audience ■ People more likely to focus on what you are saying ■ Makes you look like a professional speaker ● Practices to avoid ○ Turning your back on the audience / talking to the screen ○ Staring at one person in the audience because you are nervous or think that they are the only one listening ■ This is hard to avoid if there is only one person in the audience, so have a chat with them instead.
- 32. Avoiding Nerves ● Everyone gets nervous about presenting, its natural and can be beneficial ○ Nerves produce more adrenaline, keeping you going through the talk. ● Focus on your talk ○ Ensure you are comfortable with the overall structure of your talk ○ Review slides several times whilst waiting to speak ■ Avoid the temptation to make any major changes ● Avoid other distractions ○ Take time away from the event / people ● Dont dwell on what you are doing, it will make you nervous ● Avoid last minute changes to your slides / demo’s
- 33. Exercise: Present a lightning talk ?
- 34. Exercise: … or go to the pub / home
- 36. Take your own journey into Clojure
- 38. Learning by teaching others I really started thinking in Clojure when I started talking to & teaching others - Coding dojos - talks on Clojure (starting with the basics, showing the art of the possible) - moving on to running conferences - workshops at hack days