I went to Ruby Tuesday this week (at Heroku)

Excellent food (bacon-wrapped prunes, chcoolate mousse, little pastry things)

TIL GHC does not pay for the tickets of speakers O.o

Talk 1 (lightning talk, common security vulns), speakers: Daed and hypatia

Interesting links

Talk 2 (presenting at conferences - things you didn’t know - way beyond how to present), speakers: cczona and micheletitolo

“Now we are demonstrating how sometimes ear mics don’t stay on” lol

“Conferences kind of suck at communicating that they exist” - look at Callback Women - a resource for conference organizers trying to find speakers and speaker-interested people trying to find conferences. donate

Email (or any private rather than public communication) someone who has been to / spoken at the conference before… sometimes they will tell you “yay!” and sometimes they will … tell you a story …

Put everything that you actually depend on in your carry-on

Have your slides under version control, accessible from multiple locations and multiple machines, and on a flash drive. Bring a mac-VGA adapter, a remote, thunderbolt cord, ethernet connector, chapstick.

For a speaker conferences should:

  • pay for your travel (If the conference is cranky about travel expenses, you might not want to hang out with them anyway)
  • pay for your ticket (GHC and PyCon don’t do this, but PyCon has a financial aid system)

“It is totally ok to have personal motives for speaking at conferences … perfectly crass and cynical and works out great for everybody”

  • travel? (internationally too!!)
  • networking?
  • people offering you interesting opportunities you would have never heard of otherwise?

For a speaker, your employer should:

  • NOT take it out of your ‘time off’
  • Be proud!
  • Probably ask you to put a “ is hiring!" slide into your presentation

How I personally feel about speaking at conferences:

  • Generally grumpy but capable
  • Travel is nice (but I strongly prefer to travel with friends or to a place where I know other people)
  • Slides as code are fun to make

“It was a FIVE MINUTE talk; what makes you think that I can write a book on this??” #realLife