How to Write Tech Posts & Talks

How to go from an idea related to development, to forming it into a post, and ultimately to giving a talk about it at an event/meetup.

I've given talks for many years, and am currently the CEO of a global network of remote web developers.

Transcript

1. How to Write Dev Posts & Talks
2. Why should I care? two reasons.
3. Build your reputation. To work remotely, you need a trusted online reputation. Posts/talks also prove that you can speak clearly and confidently.
4. Contributing starts here. Writing posts & talks is a ‘gateway drug’ into open source communities, which all contributors always call “life-changing.”
5. Step One. build the courage.
6. The real reason you’re afraid to contribute. It’s not your ‘lack of ideas.’ It’s because you believe no one wants to hear your ideas.
7. “Fear is the mind killer.” At the end of the day, no one really cares if you say something they don’t want to hear about.
8. Inspiring one person is all that matters. Don’t let the possibility of not inspiring others hold you back.
9. “ The fear of saying something stupid has censored far more good ideas than bad ones. ALAIN DE BOTTON
10. Step Two. decide what to write/talk about.
11. “I don’t have anything to talk about” isn’t an excuse Every day you come up with ideas, you’re just not writing them down.
12. When in doubt, ask yourself this question...
13. “ Will what I have to say add value to the community?
14. Rants don’t add value.
15. Add Value here are some value-adding approaches.
16. How-to Most popular & flexible. Stay simple, don’t try to how-to PHP from scratch. Focus on one small thing.
17. Trick(s) Similar to How-to, but more about advice for very specific situations.
18. Experiment Performance comparisons, alternative ways of doing things, etc.
19. Introduction to ______. Bigger than a how-to. Every intro to anything that already exists can be done better (and more up to date).
20. It’s time for change. A community, framework or industry needs to change to move forward and you have the positive, collaborative answer to get there.
21. One more thing... try out your topics on forums/Twitter
22. Fail fast Get feedback on the core of your idea and either move forward or trash it.
23. Step Three. outline your structure.
24. Context. The Meat. Your Turn.
25. Context Give them enough context to understand why you have something worth hearing. No more, no less.
26. The Meat The majority of the content. Break it into sections and sub-sections so people can more easily digest it.
27. The Meat For posts: Give each section an image to break up text more.
28. Your Turn Invite the audience to contribute to the conversation. For a project, invite them to submit issues/PRs. For a trick, invite them to add their tricks.
29. Be unique Google your topic first. See what you can do differently than what’s already been done.
30. Step Four. publish your masterpiece.
31. Publish. Start up a simple Tumblr. Then re-post to Facebook, Twitter (@ people you know for retweets), reddit, LinkedIn (full post)
32. Do an English version Native language is good for a local community, but don’t forget about publishing it to the world in English.
33. Review what you’ve done. Re-read your post again. Wait a couple days and read it again. You’ll notice something every time you read it that will help you improve.
34. Step Five take your show on the road.
35. Apply to speak Once you have a successful post, you can link to it in a “Call for Papers” for an event you want to speak at.
36. Build your slides. Google Slides (free) is all you need.
37. Be simple. ...but not too simple. Keep it to 1 point per slide, but make sure the slide makes sense when someone sees it after your talk.
38. The Meat Give each section its own slide to introduce it and make it easy to digest the whole talk.
39. This is a section. helps make it easier to digest, right?
40. Design is important But you don’t need much design skill. Just focus on consistency - fonts, colors, layout.
41. Design is important Limit your slides to 3 fonts (1 serif) & 3 colors at most. Use Google Fonts and ColourLovers for a color palette.
42. Design is important Use Unsplash.com for great Creative Commons photos.
43. Humor is good. It’s OK to use memes or something funny to explain your point. Just don’ t flood your slides with them.
44. Go easy with code blocks. If you show code examples, only explain 1 small snippet per slide.
45. Give a refresher For a how-to, include a few slides in your “Context” section that quickly gets newcomers up to speed and refreshes intermediate devs.
46. Get inspired Check out SpeakerDeck’s programming section for (occasionally) beautiful, entertaining talks.
47. Practice. A lot. Present to yourself. And again. Tweak it. Practice. Practice with a mirror. Sick of it yet? Perfect, you’re ready.
48. Practice. A lot. The beginning and end are the most crucial, so nail those in your practice above all.
49. Practice. A lot. Track how long it takes to present each slide. Makes it easier to cut slides out to meet a time limit.
50. Network. Don’t forget the after party where you give your talk, it’s a great place to meet people who will love to talk to you more.
51. Review. Have someone record your talk so you can watch it back. It will be eye- opening and help you improve.
52. Review. Look for: avoiding eye contact, talking too fast, never pausing, too many “uhh” moments, etc.
53. Let’s do this. three things you can do tomorrow.
54. 1. Start tracking your ideas. At the end of each week, save a separate list of which ideas could turn into 4-5 paragraphs or more.
55. 2. Work through 1 topic. Take that topic into a Google doc, unleash 4-5 paragraphs and fail fast. If after 4-5 paragraphs you don’t think it will add value, trash it and move on.
56. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Don’t try to handle too many topics at one time. Focus on one at a time, trash the ones that don’t work and move on. Fail fast, period.
57. 3. Get on Tumblr/Meetup Get a simple Tumblr to publish to. Get on Meetup.com and start finding a local meetup group that you can set as a goal to one day speak at.
58. And never forget...
59. Inspiring one person is all that matters. Be inspired. Create. Inspire the world.
60. For more: http://x-team.com/unleash Contributors: Ryan Chartrand, Wojtek Zając