Audio recommended, kind of pointless without.

I made a teaser for this whole keynote thing. Yes, I own and use MiniDisc. Yes, it is retro-sentimentality. And yes, I am referencing Chris Keathley.

This was a roughly 1-hour production and it was a quick messy thing executed in a café. I think it turned out pretty nice.

Business - Limited availability

I have two consultants currently available and some limited availability of my time for whoever brings them on. Currently have a number of conversations about potential takers but if you've been thinking about working with us at Underjord, this is a rare opportunity where it can happen fairly quickly. If you've been hesitating, put your hat in the ring. And we'll do what people do with hats in rings.

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Preparing to talk

Or rather speak. We give talks but we do speaking. At conferences and such. In general I dare say we do talking and simply speak. But not in this case. Figured with a bit more than a month until the conferences in question I could share how I approach this whole speaking engagement situation.

I have three things lined up for the GigCity trip: NervesConf talk, GigCity Keynote and some kind of BEAM Radio recording

The keynote is the big concern. It needs to have a point. Play a key note as it were. It needs to be delivered well. It should not be a cool techie talk as such. I can't hide behind a cool demo. Write, think, write, edit, edit, rehearse, edit, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Polish and tune.

When I rehearse a talk my goal is to perform enough repetitions of it that I am deeply bored of it. This generally means I know it well. It also means that I will mostly be dealing with nervousness, excitement and pacing myself. Not so much remembering what I'm talking about when it is time to deliver the darned thing. I plan for 2 repetitions per day (ideally) as soon as I have a first iteration written which should be this coming week.

I hope this part gets less labor-intensive as I become a more practiced speaker. Repetitive learning, rehearsal and memorization does not come naturally to me. Improvisation does.

To manage the workload I think the NervesConf talk will be nearly the opposite. Heavy on the tech, lots of detail in the slides to support less rehearsal, more improvised on the speaking. The plan is to let the interesting topic and my enthusiasm carry more of the talk compared to the keynote which is more deliberate. I have asked a client if I can pull from the work we've done together. I hope we can. It is a really neat security-related Nerves journey that I'd love to share.

This way I hope to strike a balance that helps both talks fit well in my head without colliding and getting tangled. 

And then the podcast. I don't know any details yet. I don't know that it is confirmed. But a podcast I can do with zero preparation. If we have a topic I might want an hour of prep. I have no concerns on that front and I don't need to spend energy up front to enable the delivery of it.

Do you deliver talking, have you given speak? How do you go about it? Are there things holding you back from it? You can reach me on the Fediverse where I'm @lawik@fosstodon.org or by responding to this email to lars@underjord.io.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate it.