Participating in conferences and learning from experts is great, but as a community we are missing a lot when it’s the same faces every year, everywhere. We have to do our best to include everyone from a diverse background as speakers and learn from their experiences. This talk will prove you have what it takes to become a speaker yourself, and will give you practical advice to start your career as a speaker. We will talk about overcoming the impostor syndrome and eliminating self-doubt like “I don’t know what to talk about” and “I can’t talk in front of people”. This is a fun, inspiring talk, and by the end of it you will discover the super-hero speaker in you, bursting already with ideas for your first talk.
1. YOU SHOULD BE GIVING A TALK
NEXT YEAR: DISCOVER THE
SUPER-HERO SPEAKER IN YOU
ARMAGAN AMCALAR
INTERNATIONAL JAVASCRIPT & PHP CONFERENCE, MUNICH
OCT 23RD, 2019
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3. ARMAĞAN AMCALAR
SENIOR MANAGER @ WAYFAIR
Building and leading teams for almost 10 years
Professional coaching and mentorship
Lonca, a software craftsmanship school for women
Passionate about open source
International speaker
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4. YOU HAVE EVERYTHING IT
TAKES TO SPEAK AT
CONFERENCES
...AND I’M GOING TO PROVE IT TO YOU.
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5. TODAY WE’RE
GOING TO TALK
ABOUT...
Why you should talk
How to pick a topic
Kinds of talks you could deliver
Tips and tricks for a great talk
Writing and submitting proposals
Preparing for the speech
The big day
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6. WHY YOU
SHOULD
TALK
• Diversity
• Sense of self-respect & self-acknowledgement
• You have something in your mind that nobody
believes
• Spread your knowledge and selflessness
• Learn a topic better
• Meet other people in the field
• Travel the world
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8. NO ONE IS QUALIFIED UNTIL
THEY FIND OUT THAT THEY
ARE
AND OBVIOUSLY EVERYONE IS
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9. Tell a story. Tell your story.
Anyone in the industry, including juniors, have stories
Companies pay you to have stories of your own
Anything can be made into a conference talk
The contents are only part of what makes a talk interesting
You don’t have to know the topic by heart in order to talk about it
The audience will come to watch, and learn from, you
Most of the speakers out there aren’t experts at their topics
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10. HOW TO PICK A TOPIC
• What did you work on yesterday?
• Do you often think about how to do things differently?
• Is there anything you would like to improve in your daily work or
life?
• Did you start a new career or start to learn a new language or
framework?
• Did you ever say “it would be fun if someone did X”?
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11. DID I SAY ANYTHING CAN BE MADE
INTO A TALK?
• History of errors and future solutions
• Native number representations in JavaScript
• How async JavaScript works under the hood
• History of Augmented Reality
• Right-to-left direction support in React
• Scaling number of deployments
• How important communication skills are for engineers
• Endless number of libraries, tools & techniques, and maintaining & optimizing them
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12. KINDS OF TALKS YOU COULD DELIVER
• Live demo
• Live coding
• Practical examples
• Thought provoking
• Historical context
• Architectural
• Visionary
• Dreamy
• Fun / rhetorical
• Experiences that no one has
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13. TIPS & TRICKS FOR A GREAT TALK
• Start with a premise. Great talks have a message to tell, a purpose.
• Tell a story even if it’s technical. Design a journey for the audience.
• If you do live demos, make sure they are engaging and prepare for
failure
• Don’t forget that people can read code faster than you can type
• Consider cultural differences in your audience
• End with a premise, giving resolutions
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14. WRITING AND SUBMITTING
PROPOSALS
Meet
•Meet papercall.io
01
Build
•Build your talks
regardless of
conferences
02
Find
•Find the ones that you
like and apply
03
Apply
•Apply to multiple
conferences with
multiple talks
04
Apply
•If you get rejected,
just apply to others
05
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15. BUT HOW DO WE WRITE A
PROPOSAL?
• Find a catchy title
• Ask a question in the abstract
• Pique interest
• Underline how this is unique, and what the audience will get out
of it
• Show your excitement, but also be realistic
• Write only what you are going to talk about, don’t phish people
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16. PREPARING FOR THE SPEECH
• Jot down ideas
• Write the whole talk down
• Control your timing
• Do mirror practice
• Seriously, talk before a mirror
• Record yourself and watch
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28. FAQ
• Voice lessons could help—learn how to use your diaphragm and train
your voice
• Acting lessons could help—body language
• Don’t memorize your talk
• Don’t read your talk
• Introduce yourself
• Don’t try to sell a product
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