{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Fundamentals of Software Engineering","title":"E12 - How Developers Can Start Speaking at Conferences","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3264,"description":"In this episode of Fundamentals of Software Engineering, Nate and I dig into public speaking, recorded live from a conference floor between our own talks. We start where most people actually start, which is nowhere near a keynote stage. Nobody goes from never having spoken to opening a major conference, and pretending otherwise puts people off before they begin. We talk about the places that genuinely welcome a first talk: the lunch and learn at your own company, a local meetup, a book club with a few colleagues. Lower stakes, smaller rooms, shorter slots. I make the case that volunteering to speak on something is the best motivation there is for learning it properly, because you have to learn it once to know it and again to teach it.\nFrom there we get into the craft. We cover writing an abstract that survives a committee reading hundreds of them, why one talk should carry one idea, and what happens to your slides when you keep shrinking the font to fit more words in. We talk about live demos and why a recording is not cheating, tethering off your phone when the venue Wi-Fi dies, and building expansion joints into a deck so the same material can fill twenty minutes or four hours. Then the part nobody admits to: nerves. I still get them after twenty years. We finish on delivery, filler words, starting on time, ending on time, and why the room is almost always on your side.\n__________________________________________________\n\nKey Highlights\n\n🎤 Nobody starts at the keynote: Going from zero to keynoting KubeCon is vanishingly rare. The realistic first stops are a lunch and learn, a local meetup, or a book club with colleagues.\n📚 Volunteer to speak on what you want to learn: The best motivation for learning a topic is agreeing to teach it. You learn it once to know it, and again to explain it to a room.\n✍️ One idea, one talk: If you have two ideas, that is two talks. Abstracts fail when they try to be broad, and committees are reading hundreds of submissions for very...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/1BiOcr3jOEw_uiwQk5MInsKiSAl8JXHgE7p7L1stz0g/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82NmM2/MmE3OWEzYWVkMWFl/MWUxNzhkOWY1YzY1/Njg2Ny5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}