
Guide to speaking at tech conferences - karlhughes
https://www.cfpland.com/guides/speaking/
======
Thorentis
Duplicating a comment I posted on a previous conference thread that is even
more relevant here:

"... am I the only one that thinks there are... too many conferences?
Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now
has a conference. Slap the word "conf" or "con" on the end of whatever random
noun you chose for your framework and boom, start sending out ticket invites
and request for papers. Conferences were originally for leading experts in a
particular field to share new research and present papers that were going to
be published, and give people the chance to ask questions and find out more
from the authors.

Conferences now feel more like a show and tell with blogpost level quality
writing. Most non-academic conference talks I see could have been summarised
easily in a blogpost and a few screenshots or at most a slide deck.

I recognise the networking aspect of them can be useful, but I couldn't
justify spending the ticket price of some of them, to go to a conf based
around one very narrow tech (unless it was a narrow but widely used and
lucrative tech, and I was looking for work in that area currently)."
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21874372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21874372))

~~~
sl1ck731
I was particularly disappointed with re:Invent for this reason. Everything I
attended could be found in blogs that had been published for years and very
few "higher level" sessions that were still very trivial. Most of those
weren't even discussions, just follow a lab sheet that you won't have time to
finish or doesn't work at the time. I'm not sure if it was always this way,
but the only people who seem to benefit at all are those in sales-oriented
position. It is basically only good for meeting people and you may as well
just skip all of the actual content to pursue that.

It was the first real conference I've attended (luckily not at my expense) and
will likely be my last.

~~~
mooreds
I worked as an AWS instructor (not for AWS directly, for one of the big
technology training companies) a few years ago. Some of the other instructors
had been to numerous re:invents and said that the two real reasons to go were:

* Networking with other attendees

* Getting to meet face to face with AWS employees

------
Ace__
Although I have no interest in speaking at a tech or any conference,the sheer
amount of work put in meant that I had to check it out. Good work mate.

You should really add the ability to exchange email for a downloadable PDF of
the guide. And that bottom bar that slides in "20+ new CFPs every week", it
won't close no matter how many times I click on x. Browser: Chrome.

Cheers, Ace.

~~~
karlhughes
Thanks for the heads up, and I appreciate the kind words.

I interviewed over 30 speakers myself, plus read through several dozen
articles to compile this guide.

I will eventually offer a PDF download option, but I wanted to start off by
putting it out there for free to the public. After I've made some revisions
and improvements and it's a bit more stable I'll go the ebook route too.

Thanks again!

~~~
ghaff
Look forward to reading it as it's something I do a lot of. Thanks!

------
macintux
I'd long since forgotten I created a gist for speaking resources, but I've
added this and a few other links, and cleaned up some older broken (sigh)
links:

[https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837](https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837)

------
sundarurfriend
The useful information (IMO) starts from section 3:
[https://www.cfpland.com/guides/speaking/how-conferences-
choo...](https://www.cfpland.com/guides/speaking/how-conferences-choose/)

------
peter303
A variant of reason #11 is that you improve your own skills by being able to
teach it to others. That is why course tutors are people who have recently
taken a course. The material and obstacles are fresh in their minds.

------
dclowd9901
In the list of 11 reasons people speak at conferences, I can’t help but see
that a good 7 of them or so are vanity related. I think this is the number 1
reason I don’t speak at conferences (and probably the number 1 reason I find
conferences to be of very limited utility).

~~~
karlhughes
I think this is a fair critique. Many people who are drawn to public speaking
probably tend toward the "vain" side of the personality spectrum.

Anecdotally, I acted in a play when I was in college. Almost every person in
it was studying acting, and the level of self-absorption was overpowering at
times.

All that said, speakers and topics are only a small portion of what I find
valuable about attending a conference anyway. Most of the opportunity for
learning and advancement comes in meeting other people you wouldn't have been
able to connect with otherwise.

~~~
ghaff
Whether or not it's vanity, there's an element of enjoying being in the public
eye--at least in some contexts. If someone really doesn't like being publicly
visible they're mostly going to self-select out of being a speaker unless they
have some other compelling motivation for doing so.

Whether or not it comes naturally or it's a persona they've developed for
professional reasons, most public speakers like the energy of the crowd or
other audience. (Personally, I'm much more comfortable live than on video--
which is a somewhat different skill.)

------
hayksaakian
Thank you for creating this, I've already shared it with a few people

------
ilikehurdles
Wonderful work. Hopefully this will go a long way toward accomplishing my
related new years resolution to speak at tech conferences :)!

~~~
chestermacwerth
Eventually ideas like this always eat theirselves. The "speaking at
conference" meme is now thoroughly eaten; there's a cottage industry of
bullshit around the whole thing. People do it now to advance their careers and
achieve an extremely modest amount of e-fame. Most talks are pointless. It's
people giving talks to give talks about helping other people give takls about
giving talks for their boss's arbitrary stipulation that giving talks is a
required feature for "team lead" engineers, etc..

~~~
nsxwolf
It’s a goal of mine to speak at a conference so that I can have a photograph
of myself speaking at a conference for my LinkedIn profile.

~~~
ghaff
I assume you're being sarcastic. But, if not, that's a pretty bad reason.

I've been pretty critical with some other comments on this thread but I
actually agree that naked self-promotion is not a good reason to give a
conference talk.

~~~
BigJono
It's actually a great reason if you're optimising for the amount of money you
make in a career in big business. Which is entirely the point of this thread.

~~~
ghaff
If that's your only motivation, I'm guessing you're not going to do a great
job. There are exceptions of course.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Although there are many people out there who do good jobs based only on their
love of what they are doing I believe this number is dwarfed by the number of
people doing good jobs for money.

I bet the number of people doing bad jobs based only on their lover of what
they are doing is also dwarfed by the number of people doing bad jobs for
money, but it would be nice to see stats on these things.

Still, since I only do jobs for money almost everyone I've ever interacted
with that was doing a job good or bad was also doing it for money. I suppose
the parent comment might do pretty good dependent on how well they are
actually motivated by money and their skills.

~~~
ghaff
There's a vast gulf between being motivated _only_ by money and being
motivated _only_ by love of what you're doing. I enjoy my work, including
speaking, most of the time. But if someone weren't paying me to do it I would
be--at a minimum--much much more selective about what I took on.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
sure I like programming also, but I realized some years ago when I got my
first really big consultant paycheck that a lot of the stuff I used to hate
about working just flew out the window.

------
hnbreak
Speaking at conferences is a strong urge in the dev community. Some do it
because they want to improve their public speaking skills or to prove
something to themselves ('I can be as outgoing as the marketing guy next door,
har har'). Or to improve their market value.

In my early days, I had also this urge but it's wrong. The whole post is
wrong. Ask yourself WHY you want to speak at tech conferences. What's the aim
of your speech? Most of the times and most people don't have an answer.

You want to have nice Google SERPs on your name?

Why?

To increase your personal market value?

You think one speech is enough?

Not at all. You need so much more. A topic, more than your vim config or some
Github repo which got five stars. You need achievements, first. You need a
damn story, a sharp profile. Then go out and hold 10 talks/year, shotgun
Google's video search with your talks. I promise you, once you have a good
story, public speaking is easy, it feels like talking. But if you don't have
anything to tell you sound like the odd & boring AWS sales guy who wants to
sell some new overpriced AWS service and paid for the speaking slot.

And be aware that public talks don't necessarily improve your market value.
One so-so talk on Youtube about your vim config at some third-class conference
is worse than nothing. Besides, most tech conference are third-class created
by some greedy local meetup tycoon rebranding his useless meetups. The best is
that the meetup tycoon gets free content, YOU on stage, on Youtube, for a
crappy conference he sold tickets for 500 bucks. He doesn't care if the entire
world makes fun of your speech about your vim config.

I remember one guy who did music with hard-coded JS decades ago, not
impressive, maybe a bit interesting. This guy was on several speaking gigs
with always the same topic, his stupid JS music. After the third time I saw
him, I started to hate him, I swore to never hire this person. Remember,
speaking can backfire if you don't have a topic.

I've another guy: Jared, he wrote amazing Formik, a great lib. His talks
though are so-so, promoting his company (I think it's just a shell for him
freelancing) too much and yeah not on par with his repo. When seeing his talks
on a shabby meetup, my first thought was, better fix your repo's issues
instead of doing this self-promotion. Again: it backfired and didn't improve
his market value. Rather the opposite, before I thought Formik, Jared, the
king. Once I saw the speaches, OMG, Jared got jarring.

I rather prefer a cozy Youtube video on a living room couch on Svelte like
from the Youtuber Harry Wolff (highly recommended!!! => [1]). Good speakers
like Harry are entertainers, they understand to be authentic without even
trying and it's hard to deconstruct what they do right.

So, public speaking skills are overrated. It's enough to be able to moderate a
meeting/standup for 10-50 people. To do proper speaking, you need to do it
frequently, you need to understand entertainment, you need to get deeply into
story telling, how to plot narratives, sometimes you need script writers,
media trainers and you MUST be in shape, no need to look like James Bond but
getting on keto few weeks before sounds like a plan.

If you still think you should be a public speaker, test if you have the basics
for being a good entertainer. Do internal presentation at your company, bigger
ones where you invite multiple departments, do Youtube videos, screen
recordings. Test how people react on your voice, on your appearance, your
jokes, If you see positive signals or slight growth, continue.

Otherwise just don't. Public speaking is a profession and imagine a public
speaker who wants to pair-program with you in C++. I mean why not? If you can
hold a speech he should be able to write some kernel code.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPVQ3M9b6CY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPVQ3M9b6CY)

~~~
tititi
I'm an occasional lurker here but I created this account because of this
comment as it represents what is so annoying about this community sometimes.

What exactly are you aiming to achieve with this comment? Sometimes the best
thing to say is nothing at all.

> In my early days, I had also this urge but it's wrong. The whole post is
> wrong. Ask yourself WHY you want to speak at tech conferences. What's the
> aim of your speech? Most of the times and most people don't have an answer.

Who are you to say it's wrong? Even if people are doing it for the wrong
reasons, the fact that they are doing it means that this post is relevant to
them. To call the post "wrong" is so arrogant and adds nothing to the
contribution. All it does is give you a useless delusion of grandeur that
makes you think you know better than this author, or those that find value in
the post.

> \- To increase your personal market value? You think one speech is enough?
> Not at all. You need so much more. A topic, more than your vim config or
> some Github repo which got five stars. You need achievements, first. You
> need a damn story, a sharp profile. Then go out and hold 10 talks/year,
> shotgun Google's video search with your talks.

This makes no sense. If you're still advocating for eventually going to give
talks, why did you start off by calling this post wrong when it gives advice
to people that want to speak?

> And be aware that public talks don't necessarily improve your market value.
> One so-so talk on Youtube about your vim config at some third-class
> conference is worse than nothing. Besides, most tech conference are third-
> class.

This sounds like a personal problem for you. And no, one so-so talk on Youtube
about your vim config at some third-class conference isn't necessarily worse
than nothing

> Public speaking skills are overrated. It's enough to be able to moderate a
> meeting/standup for 10-50 people. To do proper speaking, you need to do it
> frequently, you need to understand entertainment, sometimes you need script
> writers, media trainers, etc.

If you're moderating a meeting with 10-50 people, good public speaking skills
will go a long way into making the meeting worthwhile for the attendees.

I have no relation to the author of this post, but it's jarring seeing
comments like that throw away nuance and kindness, and let out arrogant
statements all under the guise of intellectualism.

~~~
hotasice
Long term lurker as well, but your comment comes off in bad faith. When you
decide to try and break apart each point piece by piece to address, instead of
his whole argument as a whole, it signals that you're only trying to argue for
arguement's sake. Please don't do this, because it ruins the vibe.[0]

In one enormous post, you have managed to tip-toe the line of civility with
passive aggression, but also outright hostility "so arrogant," that it comes
into question whether or not the GP's comment was directed at your specific
demogrpahic: people that do things because they feel they want to, and not
because they have thought it through.

Perhaps you should ask yourself the same question: "What exactly are you
aiming to achieve with this comment?"

From an onlooker's perspective, it comes off as needlessly aggressive, but
without clear motive. One could say the only purpose of your comment was to
express that aggression, and not to spur interesting or novel dicussion.

In that likely case, you are posting in bad faith, and as you said "sometimes
the best thing to say is nothing at all."

[0] I've been around message boards since usenet. This behavior isn't new, and
neither is it appreciated.

~~~
tititi
If your assessment is that my comment was to express aggression, that would be
correct. I thought about what I was trying to achieve and I felt that I didn't
owe the OP any grace, since he failed to extend grace to the author of the
post. My goal was to express how I felt about the OP's comment as directly as
I could, so they could perhaps consider it the next time they want to make
another comment like that. Whether or not being less aggressive would make my
point more useful is a separate discussion, but at the time of writing the
comment, I opted for a bit of aggression.

And FYI, I've not spoken at any conference and I have no interest in speaking
at one, so I don't think the comment was directed at my demographic, I just
found it to be distasteful.

~~~
hotasice
I thank you for expressing self-awareness and civility in your reply.

Emotions are what make us human. Complex expressions of neural impulses that
manifest as many different feelings which move us to action. However, like any
other impulse, the understanding of and their proper utilization, always
brings greater utility to one's life.

We can all agree that unbridled emotional expression -- that is the actions
those emotions move us to do -- can become harmful by their unchecked nature.
We can also all agree that emotions have a purpose, and to repress them is not
the best of decisions.

Then perhaps there is a useful middle ground. Call it, "emotion, but in
moderation." That by stepping back and analyzing our emotions, what caused
them to appear, and why we feel the way we feel, we can in-turn make better,
more productice decisions.

What flowers from this post, is of no concern of mine, but I felt moved to
plant these seeds.

------
FsDuke
These threads always bring out the jealous introverts getting mad at more
outgoing people that are able to speak in public.

Guys you can do it too, really. It's not that hard.

~~~
onion2k
Introverts can be, and often are, very outgoing. They just find it exhausting
and need time alone afterwards to recharge.

I have an evergreen recommendation that anyone who wants to understand want
introvert, extravert, and ambivert _really_ mean should read Quiet by Susan
Cains.

