For many, the idea of speaking in front of a bunch of strangers can be enough to prevent you from ever responding to a CFP. But don't let it! Speaking at conferences, meetups, or even at your own company is a fantastic way to share you knowledge, meet others, advance your career, and give back. Whether you are on the fence, have decided to take the plunge and submit a CFP, or have already even a few talks, this session is for you. Drawing on their experience reviewing DockerCon CFPs and prepping speakers (including themselves) for a variety of conferences, Jenny Burcio and Ashlynn Polini will outline tips and strategies for turning your idea into a winning proposal and ultimately a compelling talk. They will share how to submit and prepare for your first - or next - conference talk.

1. Ashlynn Polini
@AshlynnPolini
Sharing is Caring:
How to Begin Speaking at Conferences
Jenny Burcio
@TheBurce

2. Why present?
Ways to get started
The Call for Papers (CFP)
Preparation
Tips for the Day Of
Agenda

3. Why you should
start speaking up
● Career growth
● Technical Knowledge
● Confidence
● Networking
● Communication Skills
● Sharing is Caring

4. Getting started
● Company
● Meetups
● Panels
● Co-present
● Local conferences or events

5. Call for Papers
(CFP)

6. What should I talk about?
● Answers to questions
● Tech you are building
● Problems you’ve solved
● Use cases & perspectives
● CFP suggested topics
Remember
● Sharing is caring
● Expertise is not required

7. FAST: Writing a Good Abstract
Audience
● Know your
audience
● Establish
relevance
Story
● Share the path you
will take the
audience on
● Frame the
problem
● Details on what
you will talk about
Focus
● Don’t be too
creative or cryptic
● Every
● Word
● Matters
Takeaways
● State the lessons
or artifacts they
will leave with

8. For many, the idea of speaking in front of a bunch of strangers can be
enough to prevent you from ever responding to a CFP. But don't let it!
Speaking at conferences, meetups, or even at your own company is a
fantastic way to share you knowledge, meet others, advance your career,
and give back. Whether you are on the fence, have decided to take the
plunge and submit a CFP, or have already even a few talks, this
session is for you. Drawing on their experience reviewing DockerCon
CFPs and prepping speakers (including themselves) for a variety of
conferences, Jenny Burcio and Ashlynn Polini will outline tips and
strategies for turning your idea into a winning proposal and ultimately
a compelling talk. They will share how to submit and prepare for your
first - or next - conference talk.
Sharing is Caring: How to Begin Speaking at Conferences

9. In this session, Ana will introduce chaos engineering and share a live demo
of how to practice chaos engineering principles on containers. We walk
through chaos engineering practices, tools, and success metrics you can use
to inject failures in order to make your systems more reliable.
The audience will leave knowing:
● how to get started with chaos engineering
● why you should break things on purpose
● how to safely execute chaos engineering experiments
Unleashing Chaos and Breaking Containers
Ana Medina, Gremlin

10. Abstract Process
● Follow FAST
● Write multiple versions of your abstract
● Share with a similar audience
● Ask for feedback
● Adjust or re-write

11. Accepted!

12. Creating the Content
Outline Create an outline with more details. Use the FAST principles in reverse order to guide you.
Feedback Solicit feedback from someone in your target audience or familiar with them.
Talk Track Add details. Illustrate your examples. Walk through it out loud.
Slides Slides should support your talk - not distract from it.
Feedback Again, get feedback. This time for both your story + slides.
Revisit Abstract Make sure your abstract fits the story you are now telling.

13. Practice

14. Delivery +
Day of Tips

15. Warm ups
Power
pose
● Warm up routines
● Power pose
○ Posture affects confidence

16. On stage
● Visual vs. Heard
● Walking the stage and gestures
● Delivery and pacing
● Eye contact

17. Rinse & Repeat
Your Talk