On Conference Speaking
I speak as part of my job and have spoken at probably 20+ events that are 3rd party to my employer in the past 2 years. Currently I am averaging about a conference a month in 2017.<p>I thought this was a really great list. Some big ones I like to call out:<p>#9: Travel - This gets me more than most things. I have on occasions bumped into other speakers completely unprepared for their travel for or for things that might go "boom" such as: laptop failure, presentation corruption, display adapters not existing (or breaking which is harder to prepare for) and my personal favorite Immunity Boosters. Hell yes. A coworker turned me on to these two years ago after coming down with the plague after speaking at a few too many events in a short period. Now its a must for me and whether its placebo effect or not I haven't gotten sick while traveling/speaking since.<p>#10: Showtime - No one is born a great speaker. Flat out no one. I know people who speak weekly at public events and they used to suck at it too. Don't be afraid/stress too much before a talk. That said, I have seen people bite off more than they can chew and give a first talk at a major tech event such as AWS's Re:Invent where rooms average 1k people. If you're going to choke at your first event, don't have it be that big/visible of a one. Start with local meetups!<p>#5/6: A big one that I always recommend is peer review your content before you even start dry runs. Presentations often live longer on sites such as Slideshare than they do in the minds of those who have seen them live. It is in sites like Slideshare that your spelling, grammar, and even design issues will stand out the most. Get someone who is detached from your presentation to read through it, maybe even two people, take that feedback and then move forward. For me, my wife who was a journalism major reviews almost all of my content despite not knowing much about the technical nature.