Creating a Tech Talk
Why Teach?
- Connections/Networking
- Reputation
- Jobs/Promotions
- Paid speaking opportunities
- Build confidence
Where to Go
- Work - sometimes required, but many tech companies will have “brown bags” or “lunch and learns”
- Tech conferences
- Small local conferences will often accept a higher % of proposals but likely don’t have any budget for travel or speaker fees
- Some larger conferences will set aside a few slots for first-time speakers
- User groups (meetup.com)
What to Talk About
It can be easier to get into larger conferences with a niche topic (less overlap with more experienced speakers), but foundational topics can be useful too.
Advice I was given that I tend to follow:
- What am I working on that others might also want to learn from?
- What topics do I want to learn about that I’ve been procrastinating? (Sets a hard deadline for learning things)
Many conferences don’t expect advanced-level presentations especially for unpaid speakers- many people are attending to learn about new tech and features they haven’t worked with before and are most interested in beginner-level talks.
Unless your company is sponsoring the conference your talk should not be marketing your product/company. This can be difficult when speaking about a product your company creates, but in general, think about “how to” and “what is” type questions and avoid showing competitors in a negative light will help to avoid this.
Things to Keep in Mind
- Be honest about your level of expertise. Being new to the field or a topic won’t stop people from coming to your talk, but it is important not to oversell your knowledge.
- Just giving information about a topic is fine, but often people also want to hear your opinion on the topic.
- Your job is to give the best presentation I can. People find value in a lot of different aspects that I didn’t necessarily intend them to have and that’s okay.
Process
Note: This is my personal process. Over time you will develop what works best for you. I generally spend anywhere from 40-100 hours creating a talk (in contrast HG workshops are around 2-3 hours of prep each)
- Brainstorm topics using the “what am I working on” or “what do I want to learn” formula. For topics I’m not an expert in, I do some initial research to make sure I will be able to learn enough to write a talk with reasonable effort.
- Create abstract
- Title:
- Straightforward: Creating a Tech Talk
- Fun/Clickbait: Naming Stuff Moar Gooderer
- Content:
- Opening hook: Being able to present on technical topics is something that many of us will have to do at some point in our careers, whether internal to our jobs, conferences, user groups, or YouTube.
- Audience:(part of the hook in this case)
- What they will learn: We’ll go through my process for doing this from finding opportunities, picking a topic, and building the talk.
- Demo content: (optional, and not applicable in this case)
- Bio (mini-resuma)
- Samara Soucy has experience in a wide variety of technologies including JS, .NET, SQL, and Azure. As a member of the Azure Customer Experience Team at Microsoft, she uses those skills to assist developers with questions on GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Microsoft Q&A. She has been a speaker for multiple conferences and is currently the Community Lead for the Tech Community on the Healthy Gamer Discord community.
- Submit to conferences/user groups/etc. Often you can submit multiple talks to a conference and they will select at most one. You can also use the same talk multiple times at different events.
- Talk gets accepted!!!
- Create the talk - Timeline is after doing this a few times- you may need more or less time
- At least 1 month out:
- Create an outline and start taking notes on what the content will look like.
- Save links to any sources you use, especially if I want to include them in the resources slide
- Decide on a demo if the topic allows for it (optional)
- 2 weeks out:
- Turn my outline into slides
- I want enough info to make them useful to someone looking at them later, but not so much that they are busy or I’m just reading the slides. Some programs (PowerPoint) let you add additional speaker notes for each slide)
- Overall structure
- Title/personal intro
- Content
- Resources
- Build my demo
- Regret my choice of demo at least 10 times
- Create readme.md for people who might want to try the project themselves
- 1 week out
- Make sure slides and demo code is accessible for people to access after the conference
- Practice & refine (I also start this a minimum of a week before, ideally two)
- Talk to a wall, talk to a friend, talk to a pet, but say the words out loud at least a few times, not just in your head.
- Work with a timer so you have some idea how long each section will take and that the whole thing will fit in your time slot
- Plan for points you can skip if there are questions that take up significant chunks of time
- If your demo requires internet access, have a backup plan and practice that a couple of times- the internet at conferences can be pretty bad.
- Prep
- Make a packing list!
- Take a look at the schedule (for conferences) and make sure you know 100% when your time is, and any other talks you want to attend. I generally skip the session before and the session after minimum to give myself last minute prep/recovery time.
- Laptop, backup laptop if you can, make sure content is accessible on both laptops and for someone else to download if disaster strikes your equipment
-(For in-person events) video adapters from whatever your laptop uses to whatever the conference is using. You can get x->multiple output adapters for $10-$20. Sometimes the organizers will tell you what will be available, sometimes you’ll find out when you get there.
- Batteries, chargers, cables etc for all your devices
- Usually, water is provided, but it’s worth bringing some of your own
- Event (Assuming in-person)
- US (possibly elsewhere) will often have a speaker dinner the night before. Great time to chat and make connections with people in a smaller crowd and get away from event anxiety for a bit. Plus, free food.
- You do not need to attend the entire conference, but please do be there and check-in with the organizers at least an hour or more before your talk.
- Find the room you will be speaking in, so when your time slot comes you won’t get lost.
- US (possibly elsewhere) will have a separate room for speakers that is quiet and has water/food available.
- Be prepared for people to want to talk to you afterward and ask follow-up questions.
- Self Care/recovery
- Speaking is exhausting- make sure to give yourself some time to recover regardless of how the event goes!
- Reflect and review feedback
- Some conferences collect and share feedback, or you may need to collect it yourself. If you happen to have a friend or coworker attending, you can ask them to come to your talk and let you know where you did well and what you can improve.
- Take a look at the whole process.
- Were there parts where your schedule was too tight?
- What steps were effective and which weren’t?
- Was your demo too ambitious?
- Did the talk take more or less time from when you practiced it?
Example Quantum Talk from 2021: