How to Build Your Public Speaking Skills as a Developer

Key Takeaways

hey folks what's up Stan Bader here and a while ago I did a video on how to speak at a tech conference and kind of how to get in to a tech conference like PyCon like I was talking about how I spoke at at PyCon Germany and how I got my talk into that conference now I was talking about how you know you need to kind of submit talks to these conferences write an abstract for your talk and just kind of try and pitch your talk to these conferences and then hopefully get in and so I think that that is viable you know it's possible to pull that off as a beginner even with no prior speaking experience but it could also be a bad experience right like if you're overextending yourself on speaking you know in front of a couple of hundred people and you're you're gonna have a bad time it's gonna be recorded on video this could also really suck so I don't you know I don't want to scare you out of that if you think you can pull it off go for it absolutely let me know how it went you know I wish you all the best but I I wasn't able to do that I had to work my way up to get into into bigger conferences overtime right and so the way I built up that skill and build up kind of that confidence and just being comfortable doing that you know I'm still like to be honest with you like I'm still scared shitless every time I give a presentation but I just noticed that the quality that comes out at the end has gotten much better over the years and he doesn't show as much but I still feel the same basically to be perfectly honest with you but okay so so the angle in this video is going to be how you know what are some other ways I can build a speaking skill so that eventually I can go in and use my skills at a bigger tech conference okay so here's the approach that worked for me basically try and speak as much as you can at work in your current job if there's an opportunity for you you know to give like a presentation over lunch just to your colleagues and develop our friends on some kind of technical topic absolutely go for it you know it's gonna be a very comfortable setting people are going to sit around they're gonna be eating lunch you know just three four five of your colleagues and friends there sit down give them like a 10 15 minute presentation I'm some tool that you found or you just walk them through it and and get some experience doing that like this is I think anyone could do that or it could build up the courage to do that I know it's still hard to do that in the beginning especially with people you know that you actually care about and care about their feedback but this is a really good way to start building these speaking skills in in like a comfortable setting now I think a step after that could be either trying to speak you know to a bigger audience at your company or you know the people you work with like you know go from three people to maybe 30 people maybe you could give a presentation for a whole department or something like that you know if you're working at a startup or a company where this is actually possible that will be a way to scale that up another way it would be and this is actually what I would recommend is to go to development meetups so a meetup group is just a bunch of people are interested you know in in one topic like let's say Python or JavaScript and they meet usually on a regular schedule and people will give presentations and often there will be food and then you know people just talk about this stuff and there is a a really good site where you can find these meetup groups and that is at meetup.com and these meetups are usually put on you know by people in the community very often it's companies who are sometimes trying to hire people you know from a meet-up or like it's a way for them to to kind of show that their cool place to work at and almost every bigger city will have will have a meetup scene like that and so these meetups are great to gain more speaking experience because it's a lot easier to get in that the stakes are lower you can just go there speak to a group of you know depending on the size like 10 20 30 some meetups get like super popular but you know you can pick a smaller meetup to start with and just give a praise and presentation of these people and the way you get in there you don't really write like a big proposal and an abstract and all of that you just talk to the people who put on the meetup right you just find the organizer and and usually they're desperate for people to give presentations because usually it's all on the organizers so reach out to them just email them or go to the meetup and actually talk to them in person like hey I've got this idea could I give a presentation one of your next meetups I you know really like what you're doing and I would love to be a part of it and like 99% of the time people are gonna go for it and it is a perfect like learning ground to get your feet wet with with your presenting skills and just you know get into get into that habit of speaking in front of people and so I would absolutely recommend going that route starting with a meetup group and then you can expand expand from there right like it's not a super big jump from going from speaking out of meetup to speaking out of conference right it's it's very similar in terms of what will be involved like a meetup is gonna be like less organized less professional in some ways you know some of them are like many of them are and they're smaller but this is a really good way to get your feet wet and they could look either look for actual like larger conferences will look for bigger and bigger meetup groups and just get comfortable speaking in front of larger crowds and this is a really really good way to ease into this whole thing of becoming a speaker at a tech conference because it's it's super worthwhile and and it's it's gonna you know it's gonna pay off in so many ways and like the relationships you built with people even speaking at a smaller meetup will be great for that I mean even even speaking you know after your company across teams will be great for that so absolutely do that and then try and build from there and I you know I I think it would be totally possible to go from like haven't spoken at any conference ever or meet up to like I'll be speaking at a tech conference in twelve months like you know and have it have a success with that like not just walking out and like completely bomb but like building up those skills enough that you could give good like well-received presentation at a tech conference within a year I think it's totally doable and I wish you best of luck with that let absolutely let me know how that went if you if you do this and pull this off sent me a video like I'd be happy to share that or just tell me how it went I'd really love to know how this played out for you people have so much interesting stuff to say and they a lot of times as developers were in some sense too timid to go out there and share our perspective and you should absolutely do that and and more people should do that and it's gonna make the whole developer community better cool