Guide to speaking at tech conferences • Hacker News Board

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#41

Post by Thorentis » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

Duplicating a comment I posted on a previous conference thread that is even more relevant here:

"... am I the only one that thinks there are... too many conferences? Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now has a conference. Slap the word "conf" or "con" on the end of whatever random noun you chose for your framework and boom, start sending out ticket invites and request for papers. Conferences were originally for leading experts in a particular field to share new research and present papers that were going to be published, and give people the chance to ask questions and find out more from the authors.

Conferences now feel more like a show and tell with blogpost level quality writing. Most non-academic conference talks I see could have been summarised easily in a blogpost and a few screenshots or at most a slide deck.

I recognise the networking aspect of them can be useful, but I couldn't justify spending the ticket price of some of them, to go to a conf based around one very narrow tech (unless it was a narrow but widely used and lucrative tech, and I was looking for work in that area currently)." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21874372)

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#42

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #41

Duplicating a comment I posted on a previous conference thread that is even more relevant here: "... am I the only one that thinks there are... too many conferences? Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now has a conference. Slap the word "conf" or "con" on the end of whatever random noun you chose for your framework and boom, start sending out ticket invites and request for papers.…

> Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now has a conference.

I mean - this shouldn't come as a surprise. Any sufficiently large community is going to self-organize and attempt to be self-sustaining (there's a named law about this self-perpetuation, I forget the name). I suspect your mental model of conferences infers too much decorum: there's a whole bunch of conferences for computer games, juggulos, furries, comics, "over-unity" energy, and anime. Why can't JS frameworks have thier own fandom?

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#43

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 2:54 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #29

hnbreak wrote: post #10

Speaking at conferences is a strong urge in the dev community. Some do it because they want to improve their public speaking skills or to prove something to themselves ('I can be as outgoing as the marketing guy next door, har har'). Or to improve their market value. In my early days, I had also this urge but it's wrong. The whole post is wrong. Ask yourself WHY you want to speak at tech conferences. What's the aim o…

> Otherwise just don't. Public speaking is a profession and imagine a public speaker who wants to pair-program with you in C++. I mean why not? If you can hold a speech he should be able to write some kernel code. I hereby make a standing offer to work with any professional public speaker to pair with them to write kernel code. Like public speaking, it's a learnable (and teachable) skill, and if you're interested in…

[deleted]

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#44

Post by mc3 » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

hnbreak wrote: post #10

Speaking at conferences is a strong urge in the dev community. Some do it because they want to improve their public speaking skills or to prove something to themselves ('I can be as outgoing as the marketing guy next door, har har'). Or to improve their market value. In my early days, I had also this urge but it's wrong. The whole post is wrong. Ask yourself WHY you want to speak at tech conferences. What's the aim o…

The problem with this is you'll end up with just TED talks. Very entertaining soundbites by super-professional speakers. But the guy with all the technical knowledge who works on code all the time doesn't speak because he's not Tony Robbins. That'd be a shame.

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#45

Post by wiseleo » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 3:01 AM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #34

chestermacwerth wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually ideas like this always eat theirselves. The "speaking at conference" meme is now thoroughly eaten; there's a cottage industry of bullshit around the whole thing. People do it now to advance their careers and achieve an extremely modest amount of e-fame. Most talks are pointless. It's people giving talks to give talks about helping other people give takls about giving talks for their boss's arbitrary stipul…

It’s a goal of mine to speak at a conference so that I can have a photograph of myself speaking at a conference for my LinkedIn profile.

I have some pics from VentureBeat while winning a contest there. :)

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#46

Post by jakobmi » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #41

Duplicating a comment I posted on a previous conference thread that is even more relevant here: "... am I the only one that thinks there are... too many conferences? Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now has a conference. Slap the word "conf" or "con" on the end of whatever random noun you chose for your framework and boom, start sending out ticket invites and request for papers.…

I'm also not a huge fan in general, but it's a distinctly good method for getting feedback when building an API or product.

Let me tell you this story: October 2019 we did something similar, but took it to the extreme: We created 8 conventions on 8 days in 8 major cities in Germany to learn more about private investors and our customers. Time-wise, almost no rational person would've invested so much time.

We talked to almost 1000 real and some prospective customers. The learnings were amazing. In the following 4 weeks, we managed to improve product and reduce churn by 3X (~24% to 6%), which is generally unheard of. It was one of the best ways ever to build up user empathy and understanding real, underlying needs as well as a ton of UX problems.

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#47

Post by claudiawerner » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #41

Duplicating a comment I posted on a previous conference thread that is even more relevant here: "... am I the only one that thinks there are... too many conferences? Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now has a conference. Slap the word "conf" or "con" on the end of whatever random noun you chose for your framework and boom, start sending out ticket invites and request for papers.…

For what it's worth, radical political economy conferences (and I'm sure ones in other fields too) are more like the ideal you describe.

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#48

Post by sl1ck731 » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 3:29 AM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #41

Duplicating a comment I posted on a previous conference thread that is even more relevant here: "... am I the only one that thinks there are... too many conferences? Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now has a conference. Slap the word "conf" or "con" on the end of whatever random noun you chose for your framework and boom, start sending out ticket invites and request for papers.…

I was particularly disappointed with re:Invent for this reason. Everything I attended could be found in blogs that had been published for years and very few "higher level" sessions that were still very trivial. Most of those weren't even discussions, just follow a lab sheet that you won't have time to finish or doesn't work at the time. I'm not sure if it was always this way, but the only people who seem to benefit at all are those in sales-oriented position. It is basically only good for meeting people and you may as well just skip all of the actual content to pursue that.

It was the first real conference I've attended (luckily not at my expense) and will likely be my last.

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#49

Post by BigJono » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #35

nsxwolf wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a goal of mine to speak at a conference so that I can have a photograph of myself speaking at a conference for my LinkedIn profile.

I assume you're being sarcastic. But, if not, that's a pretty bad reason. I've been pretty critical with some other comments on this thread but I actually agree that naked self-promotion is not a good reason to give a conference talk.

It's actually a great reason if you're optimising for the amount of money you make in a career in big business. Which is entirely the point of this thread.

Re: Guide to speaking at tech conferences

#50

Post by ghaff » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 3:44 AM UTC

sl1ck731 wrote: post #48

Thorentis wrote: post #41

Duplicating a comment I posted on a previous conference thread that is even more relevant here: "... am I the only one that thinks there are... too many conferences? Sometimes it seems as if almost any new sufficiently large JS framework now has a conference. Slap the word "conf" or "con" on the end of whatever random noun you chose for your framework and boom, start sending out ticket invites and request for papers.…

I was particularly disappointed with re:Invent for this reason. Everything I attended could be found in blogs that had been published for years and very few "higher level" sessions that were still very trivial. Most of those weren't even discussions, just follow a lab sheet that you won't have time to finish or doesn't work at the time. I'm not sure if it was always this way, but the only people who seem to benefit a…

re:Invent has gotten very large. And AWS, to their credit, is especially good at doing session videos. I haven't attended in a few years and, if I did, it would be for reasons other than attending sessions. (And, given the size and absent specific booth/meeting responsibilities, I see little reason to go.)

That said, I attend lots of events. But it's mostly for meeting with people and absorbing the general zeitgeist. Breakouts/booths are just the window dressing.