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Conference Speaking Isn't Good for Your Career Until You Make it Good

Erik Dietrich on February 04, 2020

I originally posted this on my blog a little over two years ago. If it's interesting to you, I post new content on daedtech.com roughly weekly. I ...
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integerman profile image
Matt Eland

I love this article.

I'm emerging into the speaking space over the past half year. The original trigger was a desire to give back to the community and develop skills in communication that could serve me as a director or CTO or if I choose to pivot into teaching at some point down my path. As you said, these things offer intrinsic benefits and aren't the topic of your article.

What I found in submitting to my first conference was that I felt like an unknown person and so I started writing after the CFP ended on KillAllDefects.com on Software Quality in order for the speaker panel to understand who I am and what I think about.

Once I was selected, however, I kept writing - first in order to flesh out my ideas more before the talk (it's a huge bit of work as you mentioned - at least 40 hours). When I did come out to give my talk, I had a lot to say and a central place to push people to learn more about software quality.

That said, I had no concrete product or goal other than this: Become known as an expert in software quality.

I'd say it was somewhat accomplished - at least measurable results came out of it. I'm not the name people think of necessarily, or extremely well known, but it's opening up writing and partnership opportunities via using the act of applying to speak and preparing to speak as a catalyst for professional development.

I think you yourself can be the goal or product (which touches on your developer evangelist point), and I think that the preparation process can also have byproducts in the form of a series of technical articles. True, you're never going to build as much content as you would normally, but it can drive you to create content focused on related topics, which is nice.

Incidentally, I've watched at least a couple of your older Pluralsight courses and enjoyed them. Kudos to you.

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Erik Dietrich

Wow -- first of all, thanks for the kind words and for watching the courses!

And, honestly, I think just thinking through contact capture beyond the conference probably puts you in at least the 80th percentile in terms of what I'm talking about here.

It takes the game from "show up, talk, end of story," to "show up, talk, call to action back to your site, build a somewhat sticky following via specific expertise." And the latter is better.

It makes me think of high school/college physics. If your ultimate goal is kinetic energy, most conference speaking is basically heat (waste, in that it dissipates uselessly into space). You're instead generating potential energy, which you can later optionally convert into kinetic energy.

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integerman profile image
Matt Eland

Potential / Kinetic energy is an interesting lens and I think that squares a lot with my thinking on reading books and the like on software development. Concepts I encounter and experience in my day-to-day life is this potential energy which I then convert to kinetic via writing or speaking.

And yes, both are heat - they flare up - get people's attention for a brief period, then die down. Each blog article is essentially a log on a fire, so I try to push out a few a week as my "normal" pace, scaling up and down depending on other commitments.

Most of them are brief benefits to myself and the reader, but a few of these logs catch people's eyes and send other opportunities my way, which inevitably leads to me researching new things and discovering MORE potential energy.

The end goal is more vague, but it's a beautiful fire to tend.

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helenanders26 profile image
Helen Anderson • Edited

it's a beautiful fire to tend.

Well said :D

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tedgoas profile image
Ted Goas

Thanks for writing this. This is one of the deepest dives into public speaking I've seen :)

Before reading, I was in the "do public speaking and great things will follow" camp, but I didn't have a good plan to connect those two dots. It was eye-opening to see how much effort can go into that.

Will it help you acquire new skills? Absolutely.
Will it help you meet new people? Most definitely.
But will it help you market yourself to an absent buyer that hides behind a complex job interview process? Nope.

A tough but fair take.

I'm a little more optimistic that public speaking will get you in front of a decision maker, I suppose that varies by industry. But I'm also happy to consider public speaking as a hobby activity.

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daedtech profile image
Erik Dietrich

Personally, I think the idea of "I'd do this for personal development" is the key. For instance, I blogged for a lot of years (and still do today) because I enjoy writing, first and foremost. So any career implications were a bonus.

But if I didn't enjoy writing all that much, then starting a blog because "I think it'll help my carer somehow" isn't a path I would have recommended to a younger me. I'd say, instead, "before you start writing, figure out exactly what you want out of this content creation effort and work backward."

As for having buyers in the audience, I think this probably varies both by industry and by what you're intending to sell. For instance, if you're intending to sell courses or tools to software developers, you're in front of precisely the right audience.

If you're looking to sell labor... it's complicated. In many organizations the economic buyer, the "decision-maker" and the gatekeepers are three different people: VP/CTO, dev manager, and architect/tech lead/senior engineer, respectively. You're certainly in front of the gatekeepers (who are kind of competitors), you might occasionally be in front of the decision-maker, and you're rarely, if ever, in front of the economic buyer.

But even if you were, the economic buyer creates a system (i.e. interview/hiring process) to take care of spending his or her money. So the economic buyer would say, "wow, I like the cut of this speaker's jib, but I'd be a bad boss if I stepped on my people's normal process, so I'm not going to do that for a random person that impressed me vaguely for a little while." And the decision-maker would say, "I like that speaker, but I'd get in trouble with my boss if I bypassed the interview system and gave this person the inside track." And if either one tried, HR might have something to say about it.

It's not that these things never happen, of course. It's just that buying app dev labor is a such a well-established group buying process that it's "sticky," in the sense that it strongly resists impulse buys/opportunistic hires. And that, in turn, makes "impress them from afar at a conference" a sales/marketing channel where you're swimming very much upstream.

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daedtech profile image
Erik Dietrich

Oh, another thing that I forgot to mention is that even if you're in front of a decision maker or economic buyer, there's a good chance you're talking about stuff that they don't care about or can't evaluate, anyway. A director of software development, 10 years removed from the keyboard, will have no way to evaluate whether your "The Pitfalls and Joys of Closures" talk should give you the inside track for a position, assuming he or she attends such a talk.

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Sandor Dargo

Interesting article, thank you. Do you consider (technical) blogging useful or again, it's more like a hobby for you?

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Erik Dietrich

I'd say that, like speaking, the idea that "it's only useful if you make it useful" still applies. You can easily have a blog that's pure hobby.

That said, a blog is much more of a blue chip bet for career usefulness. A post doesn't cease to exist as soon as you're done writing it. It sticks around, continuing to draw traffic any time you promote it, people find it through search, or someone links to it. And it's more cumulative -- a few years of blogging and you've got a rich set of positions/takes to showcase. And, finally, even if you don't have a plan now, you can retrofit one, so to speak, adding a call to action to old posts like "hey, check out my recent eBook about making regexes simple" or whatever. You can't go back in time and do that with a conference talk.

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Sandor Dargo

That's perfectly right, we can't go back to change a talk! At least, talks from bigger conferences stick around, especially if they used some professional cameramen to record the presentations. Probably those you can also promote anytime and build a showcase.

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steelwolf180 profile image
Max Ong Zong Bao

Awesome article I think besides the benefits of learning better.

The key might be confidence one develops through public speaking and presenting your idea to people.

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Erik Dietrich

That strikes me as something that falls under the heading of "makes me a more accomplished human" in a general sense, but without a clear path to value. Confidence could lead to better career outcomes, but it could also lead to snake oil sales.

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steelwolf180 profile image
Max Ong Zong Bao

It depends on ultimately it's a double-edged sword which you can use it for good or for bad it comes down to the intention and ethics of the person using it.

If I were to use it I always search for it to be good, but as the saying goes hell is paved with good intentions.

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Colin McDermott

Great article Erik! @daedtech