Ask HN: How do you start giving tech talks? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you start giving tech talks?

#91

Post by mcherm » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 12:40 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #89

mcherm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for instance I currently have a talk mostly assembled which would cover the way in which our team architected a system to allow small components of a complex stateful system to be deployed independently with minimal risk to the other components of the system. This could be classified under "Devops" or "System Architecture".

Okay, so if you had to summarise the lessons learned from overcoming the challenges you faced, what would you say they were?

* Isolating the effects of one team's functionality from another team's is essential if each team is to be allowed to deploy independently.

* Doing so in a way that still allows your entire app to appear to be a coherent whole is tricky.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start giving tech talks?

#92

Post by ZenoArrow » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 9:56 PM UTC

mcherm wrote: post #91

ZenoArrow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so if you had to summarise the lessons learned from overcoming the challenges you faced, what would you say they were?

* Isolating the effects of one team's functionality from another team's is essential if each team is to be allowed to deploy independently. * Doing so in a way that still allows your entire app to appear to be a coherent whole is tricky.

Thanks for your reply.

To be clear, to have a talk that makes an impact there should be general lessons that can be extracted from the specific experiences you went through. The title of your talk should address the general lessons rather than the specifics.

Based on what you've shared so far it sounds like a potential title for your talk is 'Coordinating Modular Development'. Is that the general idea behind the talk you had in mind?

Re: Ask HN: How do you start giving tech talks?

#93

Post by mcherm » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 12:05 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #92

mcherm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Isolating the effects of one team's functionality from another team's is essential if each team is to be allowed to deploy independently. * Doing so in a way that still allows your entire app to appear to be a coherent whole is tricky.

Thanks for your reply. To be clear, to have a talk that makes an impact there should be general lessons that can be extracted from the specific experiences you went through. The title of your talk should address the general lessons rather than the specifics. Based on what you've shared so far it sounds like a potential title for your talk is 'Coordinating Modular Development'. Is that the general idea behind the talk…

I'm not sure that is the exact title I would use, but it is certainly a good description of the content I would put in this talk. (My only concern with the title is that the talk I am envisioning would cover the specific technical details of ONE solution to coordinating modular development, rather than an overview of many possible solutions.)

I do, however, understand and appreciate your point that the title of the talk should put the talk in a broader context, particularly addressing why the listener would be interested.

Re: Ask HN: How do you start giving tech talks?

#94

Post by doppioslash » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 1:58 PM UTC

1. you need to have something you really want people to know about, develop a talk around it

2. start doing that talk at your local meetups, you'll figure out how to do talks well with time (also there is good advice online)

3. identify conferences you'd like to speak at, and answer their call for talks

4. keep doing all that, and at some point one of your submissions will be accepted

5. rehearse many times to be prepared, and do a good talk

6. more submissions will be accepted, and if you keep doing a few conferences a year, eventually you'll get invitations to speak at conferences