Category Archives: Conference Speaking

Jump In

Change is scary! Three months ago, ahead of my first day as a Developer Advocate, I had the same pre-first day butterflies in my stomach that I do with every change. Would I be good at this? Was it the right decision?

Despite my strong preparation and research ahead of taking this role, there were a few surprises I found along the way. Here I share five surprises I’ve encountered in my first 3 months as an advocate, for anyone curious about jumping into advocacy, or even those interested in movement from regulated industries such as banking to tech.

Speak Your Mind

The Differences Between Conference Attendance Experience as an Advocate versus Speaker and Attendee It’s tech conference season! I’m starting to find that there are two busy periods in the year for tech conferences: April-May and October-November. It’s kept me busy as a new developer advocate starting in April 2022. It’s more of a learn-by-doing approach,Continue reading “Speak Your Mind”

People Power

As both an agilist and software engineer, I enjoy attending a mixture of conferences. Yet in discussion with developers I sometimes am asked what kinds of topics are normally covered. Or even hear jokes about which methodology won in the battle of Scrum vs Kanban (sigh).

The reality is that Agile conferences cover a myriad of content encompassing various domains, including but not limited to psychology, sociology, agile theory, leadership, testing, software engineering and others. Here I reflect on some of the amazing sessions I watched and presented this year at Lean Agile Exchange 2021, and what I learned.

Coming to the Stage

With many meetups and conferences taking place online through pest past year, all my experience is based in the online world. Often, I would stand in my spare room, talking at an empty screen. That is vastly different to the in person experience I have just described.

In the hopes of dispelling some fear and myths of those others who, like me until recently, have only presented online, I regale the experience of my first in-person meetup. I will discuss the key differences between these two formats. Finally, I will give some useful tips to help you prepare to step out into the physical spotlight and give your first in-person talk.

Let The Record Show

Recording yourself is hard! Recording yourself is downright uncomfortable! Nevertheless, with us all working from home for the past year it has become a more common format for conference talks. Here I regale the lessons I’ve learned from creating my first pre-recorded talk, as well as some right daft tales of getting it wrong, to ensure that your first recording experience goes more smoothly.