Category: Advocacy

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Getting Started with Presenting

Martin Thompson and Trisha Gee

Context and Background

It's currently 2024, and I was looking for some "Getting Started with DevRel" content from my blog. All my posts are in a GitHub repo/IntelliJ IDEA Project first, and then ported into WordPress at some point. Searching my IntelliJ project I found this post, which apparently I wrote in 2020 and never published! What's more confusing is that it's based off something I wrote in 2014, so it was written 10 years ago and then I failed to publish it twice.

So, with that in mind I'm going to publish it as-is and hope that there are some useful bits and pieces in there for someone. Better than having it stuck in my drafts folder forever.

Welcome to 2020, all over again...

I have loads of advice for aspiring speakers, which is lucky because I get asked about how to get started (or how I got started) all the time. I found an email I sent to someone absolutely years ago (2014) and thought it useful enough to dust off and post. It's interesting to see my mindset back then because now I've largely forgotten what it was like in the early days.

The timing is not great, since in these Coronavirus times no-one's going to or presenting at conferences, but I firmly believe that with all these virtual events and conferences there's a much lower barrier to entry to speaking, and that now is exactly the right time to start presenting if it's something you've ever had on your wish list.

"I was hoping I could get some advice off you as I'm starting to look at ways to get out and speak a little bit more at events. Would you have some insights from how you started?"

Continue reading "Getting Started with Presenting"

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Gradle Gradle Gradle, with Gradle we’re going to play

I know I owe you a blog post1, and today I actually have the time, energy and inclination to write it. It's not often those three factors coincide.

I have already done the Great Reveal about the job I am doing now that I'm no longer at JetBrains.

The question I wanted to answer (if only to remind myself later in life!) is why?

Continue reading "Gradle Gradle Gradle, with Gradle we’re going to play"
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What’s Next for Trisha?

Right. It's about time I started looking for my next job/gig/source-of-income. I'll be honest, 9 months of sabbatical has not been as restful as I had hoped, but apparently writing two books and taking on the ownership of a restaurant are not restful activities. Who knew?

Anyway this blog post is because it's too hard to explain in 140 characters (OK fine 280, but I'm old school) what I'm looking for. There are three main paths I'm exploring:

  1. Developer Advocacy
  2. Engineering
  3. Consulting & Training
Continue reading "What’s Next for Trisha?"
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Tips for Presenters

...or, tips-for-Trisha-because-she-has-the-memory-of-a-goldfish.

  • Do not drink too much coffee beforehand.
  • Do not replace coffee with Diet Coke, it is not better...
  • Do not drink too much coffee and drink diet coke and forget to eat.
  • Check skirt length before prancing around on stage.
  • Check desktop background for public-display-appropriateness.
  • Close down applications that have popup notifications. Do you really want hundreds of people seeing that tweet...?
  • Plug in your laptop power. Re-typing your password every time the screen powers down is boring.
  • Remember your Mac-to-VGA dongle thingie. Bring one even if you don't use a Mac - there might be a cute/friendly/senior/cool speaker who needs one, and you can help them.
  • Bring your slides/laptop. Not that important, especially if you've put it on dropbox.
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First public appearance caught on video

Remember a while back I talked about my first public appearance?

Well, I chased down the video, because I'm masochistic, and here it is for you all to enjoy. Pleasingly my mannerisms are slightly less of a camp man trapped in a woman's body, which was my impression the last time I saw myself presenting. It helps that YouTube has made the video so dark you can't see me.

Slides are available for all to enjoy.

Special thanks to Playfish for hosting the event - as always, their hospitality was awesome.

The fact that they didn't serve wine is probably a Good Thing.

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My first public appearance

I'm finally moving up from working behind the scenes to actually doing a (short) presentation for the LJC. I'm going to be giving a lightning talk on Wednesday at the AWS Elastic Beanstalk event, on the JCP - what it is and what our election to the executive committee means. Ben and Martin's post gives a little more background on the subject.

Another LMAX LJC member Mike will also be giving a lightning talk, on Project Coin.

Now all I have to do is write it...