I'm a strong believer that public speaking is something that pretty much anyone can do while benefiting both themselves and their community, at least if they happen to work in tech.
That’s not to say it isn’t hard. It’s a whole new skillset, but if you put the work in there are plenty of opportunities. After all, I’m a shy chaotic Autistic nobody with odd ideas and not especially brilliant speaking skills, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities.
This is my (somewhat oversized) guide to getting started, filled with useful tidbits from experience. It's based mainly on my experience as an IT professional in the UK speaking as a hobby. Take it with a pinch of salt if you aren’t in a similar boat.
Who Am I?
I’m an IT professional with about five years’ experience. My skillset is varied, with an eclectic mix of sysadmin, cloud engineering, and programming.
I’ve spoken at seven conferences (four in the UK plus three abroad in Poland, Italy and Japan) as well as ten meetups. Topics range from Kubernetes architecture to having fun on AWS. I’ve done panels and lightning talks as well as standard talks.
I started by accident. I volunteered to help organize a CodeYourFuture event for International Women’s Day in 2023. We were short on speakers, so I volunteered to share my career journey. I enjoyed it a lot, especially the impact it had on the audience, so I wanted to continue.
I didn’t have a big network, a prestigious employer or any practical employer support, so I mostly figured out my next steps by trial and error. I’d consider myself fairly expert on application processes etc, but I’m still iterating on the actual speaking side of things.
I occasionally get invited to speak at meetups, but I mostly apply for opportunities.
Why?
I think it’s wise to start by understanding why you want to start speaking. This will shape the topics you want to speak about, and help to give you motivation when you make mistakes or get rejected.
I didn’t have an explicit why to begin with, and that led to a lot of flailing around just throwing random ideas at organizers, taking any opportunity and getting discouraged easily. I did a few talks I didn’t enjoy and rethought. My core motivations are around challenging myself, inspiring others and being creative. So, I now focus on pitching talks that meet these goals and try not to get too distracted by perks or requests.
Here are some whys that came to mind for me:
Challenging yourself
Maybe speaking scares, you and you want to overcome it? This is as good a reason as any. I don’t have much to say on that topic, I am very lucky that I don’t get stage fright. However, I can say that speaking always holds new challenges for you to work through. Seeing yourself grow as a speaker while helping others is deeply satisfying
Career
Two things change when you start speaking: you add a cool talking point to your CV and your network suddenly becomes a lot deeper and wider. When you’ve spoken, suddenly people know you and proactively come up to you to start conversations. You get many small group networking opportunities with other speakers and the organizers. It’s also an excellent opportunity to impress future employers.
Being terrible at small talk (I’m Autistic and get social anxiety in group situations), this makes all the difference. I’ve expanded my network massively, met fascinating people from all over the world and had several career opportunities come my way.
Giving back
Public speaking presents a way to give back by sharing the learning you’ve learnt the hard way, cool things you’ve found and inspiring others.
This is one of the things I love most about public speaking. Every time someone comes up to me and says that I helped them in some small way, I grin like crazy!
Passion
If you care about something, speaking about it is a lot of fun. It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet other people who also care about it. You can use talks as an excuse to dive deep into a topic that you’re interested in.
Freebies/Money
I mention this because it isn’t necessarily a good reason – it depends on your circumstances. I have lost money overall doing speaking – I’ve only once been paid travel expenses and never been paid to speak, but I see it as an investment in my happiness and career.
The great majority of tech speakers aren’t getting paid. Most conferences and meetups I’m aware of are community events. This usually means they’re run on a shoestring budget by a small group of incredible and incredibly stressed people. Most don’t cover expenses or only cover them for local speakers. It’s assumed that employers will cover them.
Free conference tickets are a good perk, if your employer doesn’t cover them. You will also get a lifetime supply of branded T-shirts, socks and bottles.
Where?
Assuming you don’t have speaking opportunities through your employer, there are two main types of events – local meetups or conferences.
Meetups
If you’re not already aware, meetups are local groups that host events on a regular basis, usually focusing on one broad topic like AWS. This is where I would start. They’re usually a lovely supportive group. Once you’ve tried a few talks you’ll have more confidence, started to develop a style, and got one or more talks that “work”.
Opportunities are normally easy to get – some meetups have forms on their Meetup or LinkedIn page or do callouts at the end of their events. Failing that, approaching the organizers with an idea at the event can work.
Conferences
I suggest doing at least one or two meetup talks before starting on conferences (if you want to start on conferences at all). This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but I believe it will put you in a position to get the best out of the experience. If you do want to start with conferences, look for conferences that can provide some support to beginner speakers.
Conference call for papers are usually hosted on Sessionize.com or Papercall.com. However, not all conferences use these, so don’t just look for conferences here.
Conference applications require at least a title and a short summary. They both need to be engaging, written with care and have good spelling and grammar because this is a competitive process. Try not to use AI to write it for you, or if you do use it at least edit its output. Writing it yourself forces you to really think about the application, and AI work is occasionally obviously AI. Anything that gives off a low effort vibe is probably bad.
You will get rejected a lot, usually without feedback. This is normal. Remember it isn’t personal; your talk probably just wasn’t what they needed. A coworker who can confirm your applications aren’t stupid can go a long way towards keeping the motivation up.
International conferences are not especially difficult to get accepted too, they’re just more expensive to travel to and the language barrier can lead to awkwardness.
What?
There is no magic topic. There’s an incredible variety of topics out there and a practically infinite range of points of view and ways of framing them. You don’t even need to be an expert on the topic, provided you can find a way to add value to attendees. This is wonderful – it means you almost certainly have something to contribute, but it’s overwhelming too.
That said there are perfect topics for an individual (ones that they enjoy talking about and progress their goals) and perfect topics for an event (ones that fit the organizer’s vision). I think good talk development requires keeping both things in mind. Your brilliant talk is pointless if it no events want it, and/or you don’t gain value or enjoyment from it.
Sources of inspiration could include:
- Your personal projects – For instance I’ve spoken about my experience with making open-source projects and my crazy pointless AWS personal projects
- Interesting stories – Human stories are always a winner. I’ve done an AWS billing talk based around stories of billing mishaps which always goes down well
- That thing your coworkers always want you to help them with - Something that most people don’t really understand (e.g. Kubernetes or DNS), but you do.
- Explaining a complex topic you’ve just learned – These can go either way. Repeating the manual is boring, but mixing in your learning journey, some analogies and a bit of implementation can make for a memorable talk.
- Your Unpopular Opinions – Playing devil’s advocate on a popular topic like microservices can make for an interesting talk.
- Your non-technical skills – Talks covering things like burnout, people skills, career growth etc aren’t the most common choice but they are important and generic enough to find a home in many different meetups and conferences.
- Problems you’ve solved at work – Or even things you’ve broken at work
- Career next steps – Talks that impress relevant hiring managers, prove your competence, or fit the requirements for prestigious conferences
- Events – past talks and submission guidelines can offer inspiration. I usually work backwards from these. I’m more than happy to write a new talk when required though, so I doubt this method would be as fun for others.
Whatever topic you choose, make sure you have enough material for the slot you’re applying for before applying. There is always some wriggle room to make it shorter (I do this a lot, it’s a habit I can’t quite seem to shake) or to deviate slightly from the application, but both are best avoided if possible.
Conclusion
The most important thing is just to start applying as soon as you have a half decent idea and an event it might be a fit for. Public speaking is not a thing you can get good at purely through studying theory – you need to do it.
Thanks for sticking with me. I hope this was useful! Either way, questions, suggestions and feedback are welcome.
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