Tag: presenting

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Summer Reading 2023

View from a beach restaurant

I'm about to jet off on my sunny* summer holidays, so it's a good time to leave you with my recommended reading and learning. Are they all my books and content? Yes. But I do have discounts and deals for them, so that's something, right?

Working With Code in IntelliJ IDEA (Online course)

I've just released a Brand New online course on LeanPub, Working With Code in IntelliJ IDEA. If you want to step through the most helpful features for writing code with IntelliJ IDEA, this is the course for you. We have a special introductory price if you click on this link: https://leanpub.com/c/workingwithcodeinintellijidea/c/eBRBFWYIyek8.

If you're already a subscriber (reader or author) of Leanpub, it's available to you for free.

If not, but you already own the IntelliJ IDEA book, I can give you a link to get the course for free, contact me.

Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA (PDF, eBook & paperback)

If you follow me on Twitter, or literally anywhere else, you'll know that Helen Scott and I released this book on IntelliJ IDEA at the end of last year. We're currently doing a limited-time-only offer where if you buy the book, you get access to our first IntelliJ IDEA course, Working With Code in IntelliJ IDEA, for free. You have to buy it before 6th August to qualify. Do it now!

If you want an e-version (eBook or PDF), I recommend getting it directly from Leanpub. It's also going to be much easier for me to confirm your purchase in order for me to issue you a discount.

If you want the paperback version (and let's be honest, it's nice to have these things physically in your hands at times) it's available on Amazon.

After you've bought the book, contact me and I'll give you a link to get the course for free.

Descubre IntelliJ IDEA

The IntelliJ IDEA book is also available in Spanish. It's feature-complete, we're just working through all the feedback from reviewers. While we're still doing that process, you can get the book at a discounted price on Leanpub. We also welcome feedback from readers.

Head First Java (Third Edition) & 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

Head First Java is, of course, a classic, which is why I jumped at the chance to help update it to its current third edition. This version covers features all the way up to Java 17, so even if you're a Java expert, there will be some new stuff in here for you. I also modernised the concurrency chapter and added so much modern concurrency stuff that we had to split it into two chapters.

97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know was released in 2020, and with everything else that was going on at the time I didn't really talk as much about this book as I would have done. I'm very proud to have been able to edit this and for this to be the first book that had my name on the front cover. It's got a huge number of tips and wisdom in it, whatever stage you're at in your career, there's something in there for you.

I have a link for a 30-day free trial for O'Reilly Learning. If you sign up with this link, you can read these two books for free: https://learning.oreilly.com/get-learning/?code=HFJAVA21. You just have to finish the books in 30 days!

Modern Software Engineering - David Farley

At last! A book I didn't write! Although... Dave did very kindly ask me to write the foreword, which I was very excited to do because I loved this book so much. I read this book in less than a week when I was on summer vacation back in 2021, and I highly recommend it as summer reading. It covers a whole bunch of topics that qualify as "Software Engineering", but it's not stuffy or academic, and Dave's writing style makes it clear why these things matter. You can buy it on Amazon, or, if you used the 30 day free trial above, you can read it on O'Reilly Learning.

O'Reilly Playlist

Oh OK, I should recommend some other stuff I didn't write. I actually curated an "Expert Playlist" on the O'Reilly platform called Becoming a Better Programmer. So, you can use the 30-day free trial link to check out that playlist.

More Learning

I'm hosting my first online training for Gradle next week. I'll be teaching Gradle Enterprise for Developers. Note that this is not about the Gradle build tool. In fact, Gradle Enterprise works for Gradle and Maven, and also has functionality for Bazel. You can attend virtually to find out more.

I'm also presenting at the Manchester Java User Group and the London Java Community in August, and Madrid Java User Group in September. If you're local to any of those areas, keep an eye on those websites and sign up when my events are published.

And Finally

As you can see from this blog, I have quite a few projects and ideas in progress or brewing. I've been investigating using substack to publish news and updates. There's nothing there right at this second, but if you are interested in receiving news about new or updated books, courses, events, and even blog posts, subscribe here.

Happy summer learning!

* I'm going to England. It's definitely not going to be sunny.

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Speaker Tips – Bootstrapping Conference Speaking

Photo of Trisha and Daniel presenting at Devoxx

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?"

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Speaker Tips – What to Wear

For years I’ve avoided talking about the topic of what to wear when presenting. I didn’t want to cover it because I didn’t want people to think that I only worried about this topic because I was a woman. I also didn’t want other women to inherit any of my neuroses around deciding what to wear. I’m the sort of person who always enjoyed thinking long and hard about what to wear the next day at work, and I know that’s not how everyone works.

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Speaker Tips – Wearing a Roaming Mic is More Complicated Than I Realised

Photo of Trisha presenting at Devoxx

I realise I have a bunch of experience and advice for speakers and potential speakers that I simply haven’t written down or shared. Here’s the first piece on things to consider that you might not have thought about.

Note: as usual, my advice is from the point of view of a woman (me) and is aimed mostly at women, but also as usual it’s probably useful for others to know too.

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What Can Conferences Do To Attract More Women Speakers?

Trisha presenting at JavaOne

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.

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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.