Your ego isn't something you just "check"
People toss around the word ego with zero understanding of what ego is and how it functions.
YOUR VERY SURVIVAL IS AT STAKE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8NNtpzYQx8
But how developed does your consciousness have to be to even begin to grasp it?
Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#32> if you ARE the only person capable of giving the talk then is there is a diversity issue. Can you take an honest look at the diversity of your industry and perhaps mentor new ones – especially those from under represented groups – to be able to speak on such topics? This seems a bit bizarre to me. Sure, they're the only one who knows right now, but they are giving a talk at a conference, which is supposed to have t…
Some of the best talks I've seen are along the lines of "nobody cares about X but me, and here's why _you_ should care about it" or "I'm the only person who has attempted Y (and lived/succeeded) and here's what happened".
If a lot of people could give the talk, it wouldn't be that interesting. Giving talks is often the first step at getting the message out.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#33Conferences don't exist to convey information. You can learn stuff from conferences, but I don't think I've ever been to one where people were talking about things that weren't already publicly available on the internet. (An exception might be conferences like Apple's WWDC, since that's a place for the company to announce proprietary info) When people attend conferences, they're doing it to be seen . That's true whet…
> Conferences don't exist to convey information
They exist exactly for the purpose of conveying information, though it's generally commercial vendors trying to make known their product & services.
Prior to the internet, this was one of the few venues for professionals to congregate and share.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#34Conferences don't exist to convey information. You can learn stuff from conferences, but I don't think I've ever been to one where people were talking about things that weren't already publicly available on the internet. (An exception might be conferences like Apple's WWDC, since that's a place for the company to announce proprietary info) When people attend conferences, they're doing it to be seen . That's true whet…
DEF CON has a lot of informational talks where research is presented. Going to villages also sometimes gives you the opportunity to join a team and learn new stuff. Research is also presented at black hat (though not necessarily as much, it's more for "suits"). Shmoocon and bsides, too.
I'm not sure if this is more security-related, but many of the top security conferences have lots of useful stuff there.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#35Blog Writers, Check Your Egos
Seems like the author didn't feel the irony while writing this post.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#36I hate the phrase, "check your [facet of personality]." I have asked people to examine their motivations, and I always will - because saying, "why do you believe you are the most qualified person to give this talk?" should really be answered before the person gets up to speak.
And if the answer is, "I'm not, but the person who is doesn't want to evangelize", fine. But yes, consider why you're speaking. That's fine. Otherwise, the message is a load of drivel.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#37Conferences don't exist to convey information. You can learn stuff from conferences, but I don't think I've ever been to one where people were talking about things that weren't already publicly available on the internet. (An exception might be conferences like Apple's WWDC, since that's a place for the company to announce proprietary info) When people attend conferences, they're doing it to be seen . That's true whet…
I give talks at conferences for the same reason I write blog posts. A talk or a post gives me a reason to get my thinking straight about something. There's nothing like trying to explain something to force you to figure out how it really works and identify the places where you are hand-waving over gaps in your understanding.
Fame/ego _sounds_ like a nice side-effect of this activity, especially when you succumb to survival bias and look at people who have been writing for a while or speaking for a while.
But to get here, I had to give some talks that were soundly (and rightly) criticized. That can be humiliating, and more than once I have vowed never to give another talk. Many others followed through and gave one talk, or maybe two, and then never gave another.
Same for blogging. Today I'm supposedly a good writer. But 3/4 of my posts generate crickets. Writing is a terrible way to try to build your ego, it's either criticism or the resounding impression that nobody cares about you and your writing.
Sure, I guess some people want to be famous and have people applaud their talk and are willing to plug away at it to get there for that reason, but in all honestly, if fame is what you seek, writing code is a far easier path to that fame.
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Summary:
To get to the point where you get your ego stroked, you have to endure a lot of your ego being totally destroyed. Most people don't make it past that, therefore if we are to postulate a reason for giving a talk, "ego" is not a good reason for most people, because most people never get that ego boost.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#38Conferences don't exist to convey information. You can learn stuff from conferences, but I don't think I've ever been to one where people were talking about things that weren't already publicly available on the internet. (An exception might be conferences like Apple's WWDC, since that's a place for the company to announce proprietary info) When people attend conferences, they're doing it to be seen . That's true whet…
> Conferences don't exist to convey information
In this I agree with you. I have yet to give a talk where the technical content couldn't be better conveyed in text. Different people comprehend information at different rates. Some people like to pause here and there and think about what they've just read. People read faster than they listen to the spoken word. Blog posts can organize content with footnotes and links to allow people to explore.
I can go on and on. A spoken talk does exactly two things a blog post cannot do:
1. I can communicate emotion--like enthusiasm--better in person than on video, and better on video than in teh written word.
2. A bunch of people watching a talk together spill out into the hallway together.
The point of most conferences is the "hallway track." If a talk motivates people to be interested in something (point 1) and to talk to others who are also motivated (point 2) while the iron is hot, then the ideas can become sticky.
All I try to do in talks is convey enough information to let people decide if they want to research the topic on their own. My job is to sell them on how interesting it is, and then the audience can use the hallway track to follow up.
I am NOT trying to teach anything in a conference talk.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#39I'm a conference organizer, and I'm not sure what I just read. I feel there must be some angry emails or negative interactions that led to this blog post. I'd encourage the author to consider if there is anything they can do to attract different kinds of people to their CFP or perhaps manage expectations better? One thing we did with our most recent CFP [1] was to reply individually [2] to each person who submitted w…
Replying to each submission is very impressive! Looks like last year you had ~24 speakers, so I assume you had ~100+ submissions. That's definitely dedication! Have you run into speakers responding negatively to your (constructive) feedback before?
Not really. But to be honest, I think people who are upset with the rejection or the feedback are not likely to share that with me.
I like to think that how we message the CFP and how we manage the process and communication with submitters decreases the chance of people being overly upset with the outcome.
Re: Conference Speakers, Check Your Egos
#40Conferences don't exist to convey information. You can learn stuff from conferences, but I don't think I've ever been to one where people were talking about things that weren't already publicly available on the internet. (An exception might be conferences like Apple's WWDC, since that's a place for the company to announce proprietary info) When people attend conferences, they're doing it to be seen . That's true whet…
> When people attend conferences, they're doing it to be seen.
Not when I do it. I go to the conferences to learn. To learn what's out there, to see what people are working on, what they're excited about, what they want to talk about, what they want to hear about. Sometimes I give talks too, but that's usually not the fun part of a conference to me.