Today I'm experimenting with something new. Given how much I'm working with videos these days, I thought I'd do a short video about the conferences and events I'll be at between now and the end of 2024.
conferences
Speaker Tips – Bootstrapping Conference Speaking
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?"
What Can Conferences Do To Attract More Women Speakers?
Now I've been speaking at (mostly Java) conferences for a while (six years now), I get asked to present at a lot of conferences. Obviously all these conferences are mostly interested in my terribly educational talks, but it's also because I'm a technical woman and there aren't very many technical women speaking at conferences.
In my experience, conferences want to do the right thing - they want a diverse line up of speakers, they want to attract diverse attendees. Often this is not as easy as it may seem, and frequently conferences are Twitter-shamed for not having enough women speakers. When it gets to this point (and often before), conferences frequently ask me for advice on speakers they could invite, and how to attract more women.
JavaZone 2016
It's been a while since I wrote a conference write up. The short version of "why" is because I got a bit bored of doing it. Plus, I found I was attending conferences as a speaker "on the circuit", and my experience of hanging out, catching up with my friends, chatting to other attendees to see what they're up to and so forth, didn't seem as useful to share with people who might want to find out whether a conference is worth attending from a content or atmosphere point of view.
But I feel compelled to blog about JavaZone. I presented there back in 2013, but every year since then haven't made it for one reason or another (the fact that it's near my birthday in no way impacts my scheduling…). I made the effort this year, and I'm so pleased. Now I've been to many more conferences, of various sizes, various themes, all around the world, and I can definitely state that JavaZone is up there as one of the best conferences around.
Why?
Interview: Trisha Gee on the Java Eco-System
While I was at QCon New York (probably my business conference this year!) I was interviewed by Ralph Winzinger for InfoQ. It felt like a short interview at the time, but we covered a lot of ground – Java 8, Java vs other JVM languages, the effectiveness of the JCP, and the future of Java. … Read more
Android Xtended
You may have noticed that the more I go to conferences, the less I write about them. I could claim lack of time, but the fact is that all my write-ups will be something along the lines of "Loved <city>, went to talks that made me think, met interesting people, gave a talk or two that seemed to go well". Not sure if people get bored of reading that, but I get bored of writing it.
That's not to say I'm bored of conferences. On the contrary - since I work from home, travelling to new places and meeting Real Human Beings keeps me sane. Plus conferences are fun.
But I went to a conference on Saturday that makes me feel compelled to write something, and not just because it was organised by my two fellow Sevilla JUG organisers. @IsraKaos and @RGDav are both doing more Android day-to-day than server-side Java, so this is an area they're interested in learning more about. Not content with organising Android events every other month, they decided they had so many interesting speakers they wanted to have speaking here in Sevilla that they wanted to run a whole day, single track conference, on behalf of GDG Sevilla. Android Xtended was born.
Blind CFPs – a Postscript
Since publishing yesterday’s post, I’ve had a lot of great comments, so I thought I’d write yet another post to answer them. Firstly, let me state that I don’t think blind CFPs are a complete waste of time – for example, I know that there are circles in which speakers will refuse to submit if … Read more
Are Blind CFPs Really The Answer?
Off the back of yesterday’s post, I received a number of comments and questions around blind CFPs (Call For Papers – usually to get into a conference you submit to a CFP) for conferences. I often hear it said that a blind CFP will fix, or at least improve, the diversity imbalance at conferences. I … Read more
Improving Speaker Diversity
Last month at Devoxx I was in a session discussing what we can do to encourage more diversity in our speakers (specifically, although not limited to, increasing the number of women speakers). I’m going to outline the things I remember being discussed, although as usual we did not find the answer to the problem, only … Read more
MongoDB London
<em>TL;DR MongoDB London, 6th November, 50% off with discount code 50Trisha. So, MongoDB London is nearly upon us again, and I’m dead disappointed I can’t make it this year (I’m [keynoting at GOTO Berlin] (http://gotocon.com/berlin-2014/presentation/Party%20Keynote:%20Staying%20Ahead%20of%20the%20Curve) instead, which I’m terrified, I mean, excited, about). The last MongoDB London was really interesting for me – I was … Read more