| 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 |
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.