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**Bill Kennedy:** I had somebody - this is how bad it can be - just recently at a Meetup during a Q&A session say something to me, and they said it with some anger to them, right? And again, I can't hear and I couldn't process it fast enough, and I hate drama, so I just backed off and assumed he was right, and tried to... |
**Erik St. Martin:** \[43:38\] And there's this weird atmosphere though too, because there's a couple of conditions too that happen, even outside somebody stomping the speaker and just kind of throwing them off their game. You have people who aren't courteous to others on the mic; they just want to talk and just tell a... |
There's situations like that that can happen, so all in all, the Q&A thing gets difficult to do. Then you have other people sometimes who, because of their insecurities, need to try to stomp the speaker, so they can basically live vicariously, right? Like, "Okay, I don't need to speak publicly, because Bill Kennedy spo... |
Somebody was saying they found it hard to go to speakers in the hallway. I think people should question that assumption... Because even though I've always had a problem getting up on stage or putting myself publicly, I have always seen other people as people, so I'll walk up to speakers and talk to them. |
I think you should, I think they're excited about their topic, they wanna talk with other people. And to Bill's point, he wants that validation, he wants people to come up and tell them, "Oh, that was awesome. I love this", and ask questions about this. But that's more of a one-on-one, rather than being put on the spot... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** That is way easier said than done though, Erik, you have to admit. While it might come easy for you, I know I've been in situations where I'm like, "Oh man, this is so-and-so...", because you're idolizing them in some way, because they're doing the things you wanna do at that level. It's like see... |
**Erik St. Martin:** Yeah, so a little bit of that is that you have to take it out of your head. You're measuring them based on your perception of them, right? |
I went to a MySQL conference one time where the lead MySQL database engineer there was sitting by himself at the bar. Nobody would go up and talk to him. I was just like, "Really?!" |
And don't start out on technical stuff, just start talking about dumb stuff... In that scenario, I walked up and I just started talking to him about like "It'd be interesting to know how many hard drive failures they have just in a day, at that scale", and that's just kind of how the conversation started off. |
I've been to Ruby conferences and talked to speakers about sports, and things like that. They're people. Everybody's just people, and it's unfair to pedestal people like that. Even ourselves, we all have insecurities. You only exacerbate the problem for both you and them. Now they're sitting there alone and they're lik... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** I know I personally make it a point to - when I go to conferences, I try to formally \[unintelligible 00:47:29.03\] with people, and the best way I found to do that is to try and get personal a little bit. Not about the talk they just gave or some deep technical concept or what not... We might be... |
\[47:53\] So if you really are interested in getting to know people, you'll find that you develop friendships and relationships much more easily by talking about something other than the highly technical stuff you just went through. |
**Erik St. Martin:** You disarm them a little bit. They're probably there, insecure about their own talk, and it allows you to help them bring their own anxiety down by just talking about things that are just real, things that don't have to make them think about, "Am I about to answer this question correctly?" |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Exactly. |
**Erik St. Martin:** How about you, Carlisia? Are you able to just kind of walk up to people, or do you have the same reservation? |
**Carlisia Thompson:** I guess it depends... I'm pretty good at walking up to people and just talking to people. For example, I was at GopherCon UK and I wanted to talk to Peter Bourgon, and he always had people around him. I'm like, "I don't have anything interesting to say to him. I'm sure those people have more inte... |
**Erik St. Martin:** I'm sorry Peter, because I'm about to get you swarmed, but if anybody wants to meet Peter and has not, and is kind of like fearful there, he is one of the most down to earth people I've ever met. Just a really nice guy, really interested in hearing what other people are working on. |
If you see him at GopherCon this year, you should definitely walk up and talk to him. He's a ridiculously nice guy, and smart, too. So he'll make you feel good about yourself and dumb at the same time. \[laughter\] |
**Bill Kennedy:** I've got a question for the group, Erik. There are at least 20 people if not more listening to this podcast who probably would love to give a talk, but are hesitating, either because of this fear, or they don't feel like they have a topic, or several other things... So what do we tell these people to ... |
**Carlisia Thompson:** I have something to say. Giving a talk - any talk if you haven't given any talk, is terrifying. Now, I don't know how it will be for other people, but I will share my experience. The first time I ever gave a talk, I think it was at an internship I was doing, and every intern needed to give a pres... |
The second time I gave a talk, I don't even remember... It was like a third nerve-wracking. So it's not going to be nerve-wracking every single time. The first time is going to be terrifying, and then it's going to get a ton better - or maybe not, but the point is you need to do it. If you want to give talks - and not ... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** \[51:55\] It is a skill just like any other, and you get better at it by doing more of it. To use a now cliché term, "lean into it." |
**Carlisia Thompson:** You get better, but my point is... I gave a couple talks last year; I gave two lightning talks at GopherCon - one at GopherCon and one at the opening party, and then I gave a keynote talk at Golang UK. And I'm not super good, but I wasn't terrified, because I had given some talks before. So yes, ... |
**Erik St. Martin:** My thoughts and experiences mirror that, too. I had minimal speaking experience. I had done a couple meetups, things like that... I had done some training in a small group, 20 people, something like that. I had done I don't know how many episodes of this podcast by that point, and house notes and i... |
The whole process for the months beforehand, it was terrifying, and even stepping out on stage - terrifying. Even afterwards, on that link that Adam posted in the channel for the Linux.com or whatever, that mentions the talk - I saw that this morning and I was like, "Oh, crap... I just want the video to disappear into ... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Well, I'd like to make a proposal, since I have the mic, I have the platform here... I think this would be a good opportunity - basically, try to help your fellow community members. If you are a meetup organizer, I'd recommend that you put together a safe space, an environment where those who are... |
You create a safe space whereby you have a technical topic that you're talking about; you're still talking about Go or whatever your topic happens to be for that particular meetup, but you're creating an environment where in 10 or 15 minutes, a lightning talk or a longer talk, you allow for that constructive feedback t... |
I'll challenge meetup organizers to sort of, in an upcoming meetup, create a meeting that's all about everybody getting better at giving a talk. I think they will also get better for it. |
**Erik St. Martin:** \[56:08\] I think challenge the community, too. There's a number of people in the community that do help everybody with their proposals and their talks. I was fortunate enough to have a number of people help review my talk many times throughout its development; Bill Kennedy and Brian Ketelsen a cou... |
People wanna help, so reach out... Like, "Hey, I'm thinking about doing a talk", and I'm sure that you will get lots of volunteers of people who will help review it or listen to you and give feedback and stuff. |
On top of that, I challenge all organizers of conferences to help facilitate this. We want new blood, right? There's a bunch of conference circuits where it's the same group of people talking; they just kind of move from conference to conference. We want fresh blood, so I encourage conference organizers to get involved... |
Another thing that we do - a lot of the people don't know... If you ever see myself, Brian Ketelsen and Dave Cheney leave a party early, usually it's because we're going back to a hotel room and letting some of the speakers do dry runs of their talks in a hotel room, and we kind of give advice, and stuff like that. I e... |
**Carlisia Thompson:** Yes, I want to +1 everything that Erik said and focus on the part of getting somebody to review your talk is essential. I wouldn't go without it if I were a beginner speaker. There are multiple dimensions to speaking on the stage. One is your preparation, the other one is your physical presence, ... |
Just the fact of getting that other person's presence and the feedback will help you frame it in your head, the talk. This is true for me, but I think it's also true for most people. |
**Erik St. Martin:** And I think that if it's your first talk, talk about something you're extremely passionate about. That, at the end of the day, is what people are going to take away. Some of the best talks I ever heard didn't teach me anything, they just got me thinking differently, and were very engaging. |
You're going to do much better talking about something you're really excited about, like Brian's case, and stuff like working on a little Gobot stuff for the smoker; you get pumped about it because you love barbecue, so you wanna just share that with the world, and it becomes much easier; it doesn't become so challengi... |
And you can turn anything into a story. I had a hard time looking at my own talk for the conference I spoke at back in November, because it was Kubernetes and this large scale thing, and there's a lot of technical details there, and it's like "Well, how do you frame that?" How do you tell a story? How do you get people... |
\[01:00:16.00\] So at the very least, if you learned nothing new, you'll walk away at least knowing how the cable coming out of your wall works, how does video get there. |
People actually really liked that. I got a number of people who came up to me afterwards that thought it was really cool, and kind of questioned "Being a technologist, how did I live so long and never questioned how that actually worked?" |
I think we can all frame things and bring in interesting views and teach people stuff that they may not know, and people will walk away with something from the talk. But definitely share your love and passion, whatever you do. |
Same thing here - I think some of the best episodes on this show are when people bleed a little bit of themselves into the show, they let people in on a personal level a little bit, whether that's through humor, or just kind of deep sharing of their feelings and stuff like that - that's the stuff people really cling to... |
**Carlisia Thompson:** I agree. And circling back to the topic of preparation, I think it was said by somebody here, there are so many people in the community who are totally willing to help. If you can't find somebody, ping somebody - one of us, or anybody - because you'll be lead to somebody who can help you with pre... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** He already announced that himself, so you're in the clear. \[laughter\] |
**Bill Kennedy:** Yeah, we're in the clear... To the point that we have that document out in GoBridge that can really help you prepare for presentations, I'm really out there, I'm willing to work with everybody who wants to give a talk. And even if your talk doesn't make GopherCon, there's so many other conferences out... |
If you have inside of you this desire to really try to give a talk, it's something you wanna do, let me know. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** And for those of you listening, you should really take this to the heart. This is from somebody who's given lots and lots of talks, who's very experienced at this, so this is the stuff money can't buy; definitely take advantage of it. |
**Erik St. Martin:** I challenge everybody... This is a new year - everybody set yourself a goal... Do some public speaking. If you've always been afraid of it, do one thing this year. Pick one event, do a meetup, do an online meetup, do a lightning talk, if you don't wanna prepare a 20-minute or 40-minute presentation... |
\[01:04:13.18\] Let's start to accept that people are people. Approach them, treat them as you would anybody else at a party that you don't know who this person is. You do yourself and them a disservice. Let's start thinking that what we see of people is only what we see and that our perception may not be the reality. ... |
Let's start to accept that maybe we've built false perceptions of people and we're holding them to a standard that maybe we shouldn't, because it doesn't do them service and it doesn't do you service. |
**Bill Kennedy:** I think another thing too is if you are at a talk and you see a mistake that was made, or something wasn't a hundred percent accurate, keep it to yourself and go to that speaker after, and just ask them if they want that feedback. Some speakers don't want it; it's solicited, at the end of the day... B... |
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