If you’re looking to break out in your industry and looking to take yourself to the next level there is one thing that can help propel you into opportunites you never imagined. What is it?
Public Speaking
It’s true. No doubt about it. I attest most of my success to a fateful day in 2008 (May 31st to be exact) when I spoke at Desert Code Camp in Phoenix. That was my first public speaking event in a professional setting, ever. The topic?
Intro to Dependency Injection and Inversion of Control
You can find the slides for that talk right here on slideshare.
I’m serious, that’s my first foraye into speaking. The slides are terrible and embarassing, but everyone loved the talk at the time. In fact, the people liked it so much that when I signed up to speak there I was able to see how many people were going to be at my talk in advance. The web app that code camp was using at the time had that feature (it was a different one than Desert Code Camp uses now, but similar). Long story short, my talk went from the “small classroom” to the medium room, to the large room to the auditorium at a tech college I was speaking at. Fun fact – the presentation was at UAT to be exact and thats actually where I went to college. I was very familiar with the auditorium and knew how many people it could fit. At the time I went it was 172 people.
How many people were there when I presented? Well over 172, there was standing room only and it was one of the most popular talks of the day. This is not a humble brag, but I am actually saying this for the exact opposite reason. I’m saying this because when I got on stage, I was scared shitless. To this day I remember walking on stage and then walking off, going outside, calling my wife and telling her how I did, going home and falling asleep from the sheer exhaustion of stress and terror that I just experienced. I do not remember any of the talk whatsoever. Kind of crazy how the mind will do that to traumatizing events.
Terror? Stress? What? Why? You may ask. You had a popular talk. You might think. You’re right, I did. People loved it and I got a lot of professional attention because of it, and it helped my career. The important thing to note here is that this was my first professional talk, ever. The most people I’d ever spoken in front of prior to that event was maybe 10-12 people, and that was during a work lunch when you go around the table and talk about something (such as a team building event). 172+ people? ABSOLUTE TERROR, PANIC & FEAR.
The thing is, public speaking has often been rated in many publications as the one thing people fear far more than death itself. Thats a pretty bold statement. More than death itself? I don’t know about you, but I love life. Sure, its full of stressors and other things that are out of my hands at time, but I love being alive. I’d much rather get in front of people and talk than die. But … thats the reality of the situation – people are scared to get in front of crowds and speak. So scared that they’d rather die. Think about how many people you know that say “OMG, there is now way I could do that, I’d die”. Yeah. Exactly.
That one day led to many job offers eventually. Not just full time offers but consulting offers and offers to do bigger and better things. From speaking I ventured deeper into blogging and then into more writing in general. I kept speaking and eventually got noticed by some consutlingn firms. I worked for them for awhile and kept speaking as well. Companies usually love when you speak in public. You’re a public face of their company (in this case, part of the engineering deparment). Eventually I got enough offers for external contract jobs that I decided to jump and go work for myself as a consultant. I did that six years ago in 2009. I went full time independent consulting. How? All from speaking.
If I had never got in front of people and spoke about what I knew I’d never be in the situation I’m in now. I’m foreever grateful to those who gave me the opporutnity to speak, to hire me and to bring me on to help their team. Thank you.
Fast forward many years later from my initial speaking engagement and I’ve now spoken to crowds of 400-500 people at times with no fear. As with anything – the more you do it, the better you get at it and eventually you actually kind of get used to it.
I challenge you to go out and speak. Find a local user group, a code camp, a meet-up of some sort. Just go out and share your knowledge. Don’t be scared. Will you know everything? No. Will there be someone in the crowd who knows more than you? Yes. Regardless, you need to get out there and do it. You’ll be glad you did. It will open doors you never knew existed.
Agreed, Donn. And if you’re worried about public speaking? Join ToastMasters!
Very good point Vince. I agree, if you need to bone up on speaking Toastmasters is a great place to go! Look online for your local chapter.
I saw you speak at a HDC in Omaha few years back. You were excellent.
How timely, LinkedIn had a nice post today from Aasif Mandvi entitled “Everything I’ve Done in My Career Has Terrified Me”. Hits the same notes as you do.
When I try to recruit new speakers for our User Group, I always tell them that they should imagine themselves as among friends, because they are. This is especially true if the audience knows this is your first time, they will be encouraging and helpful.
Keep up the great work Donn!
Thanks for reading Darin and thanks for coming to my HDC talk way back then! I love that conference. 🙂
Great article Donn, I agree completely. I think it’s good to challenge ourselves in this way, I’ve done enough larger presentations to not get too worried about them (though I still get butterflies in my stomach). My current challenge is to find a topic that hasn’t been done to death but that I’d still want to do.
Another way to make great connections and get to know a lot of people is to start a mobile meetup. When Pete Erickson started MoDevDC, I was there from the start, did some presentations and paid attention to how it all grew (he now runs MoDev conferences several times a year in the DC area!). When I moved to Rhode Island, I launched MoDevRI only knowing a couple people in the area. Over a year we developed a pretty good group were others will willing to not only share offices for the meetups, but also present on various topics. I met & helped a lot of people during that time and got some work out of it as well.
Inspires me to learn more so that maybe i can go and talk to people in the future who will be in my position now as a beginner. Great article, thanks.
Thanks donn for sharing your nice experience
Great post Donn. Agree wholeheartedly on the value of speaking and the “learn by doing it” advice. I found toastmasters to fixate too much on tactics whereas to me it’s far more important to find a subject you’re so passionate about that the quality of delivery becomes almost entirely irrelevant.
IMO we all have a unique voice and we come to it most quickly when we stop trying to incorporate someone else’s advice on speaking style and start focusing purely on communicating the essence of the subject as passionately as we are for it.
Great post. I think you’re absolutely right. Speaking is a great way to move your career forwards.
Nowadays with lots of meetups and local groups it’s also easy to start small. Speak at your local Java user group or Google Dev Group or whatvever suits you. There are less people attending – which should help a lot. 172 and more people surely is a dauniting experience for the first speaking gig 🙂
One thing to note: I think one should not expect to get too used to it. I guess there always will remain some fear/excitement/whatever. And I think this is also a good thing. It keeps you on your toes and it helps you to prepare better and to be more lifely. And the latter is very important to keep your audience engaged.
You bring up a good point. Getting used to it is relative. I can speak without any fear in front of my GDG Group here in Phoenix. I can speak relatively well at national conferences. As soon as you change the audience (perhaps speaking to business folks instead of devs) then that fear/etc comes back. Glad you brought it up.