Having recently completed a round of speaking at technical conferences in Europe, I was reflecting on my experiences speaking at these 4 conferences.  In addition, I’ve been speaking globally for a number of years and I was thinking about these questions:

• Why do I chose to speak at a conference?
• What makes the experience best for me as a speaker?
• What makes my audience happiest?

I thought it might be helpful to conference organizers as well as potential speakers to share my thoughts here.

Why go?

There are a number of dimensions to me deciding whether I’ll speak at a technical conference.  These include the following:

• Invited speaker or must submit
• Location of conference (city, country)
• Theme of conference – including past years

When I started speaking, I submitted many a long application.  It was quite frustrating to take the time to submit a detailed proposal, only to be rejected with no feedback provided.  While I realize (because I have been a conference session reviewer) how much effort it is to provide feedback to potential speakers, I have NOT submitted subsequent proposals to any conference from which I had been rejected without feedback.

Because I have been speaking publicly for over 10 years, I often get invited to speak at conferences.  Currently, I choose to speak only at conferences which invite me.  I no longer participate in conferences which require me to submit proposals.

I also have favorite cities, such as Sydney, Australia, so if I get an invite to speak at a conference in one of these cities, then I’d be more included to accept that invitation.  Additionally I have a list of ‘want-to-go-to’ cities, as above, if invited, I’d be more inclined to accept.

The more information I have about a conference, the better decision I can make as to whether a talk from me will be useful to the attendees.    To that end, I do research before I decide to accept a speaking invitation.  This will include:

• Talking to any past speaker of the conference about their experience
• Going to the conference website from this year (and previous) to look at who spoke there
• Watching select videos of past conference talks
• Looking at the type of person and number of people that attended

What makes me happy?

Traveling globally alone is both exhilarating and arduous.  The best conferences take this into account.

First, as I can not sleep on planes, I often ask the international conferences to pay for additional days in a hotel before the conference, so that I can recover from jet lag.  Even better is if I can get reimbursed for a local AirBnB, as they are often quieter than a hotel.

Arrival into the new place is the most challenging.  I book as many direct flights as possible.  I aim to arrive between noon and 5pm (off peak, but before it’s dark).  A few conferences arranged for a driver to pick me up at the airport – this is particularly welcomed in countries where English isn’t spoken frequently.

If I have a really long flight (going to India, Australia, etc…) being able to directly check into the hotel at whatever time I arrive is welcomed.  Again, the best conferences arrange this in advance by coordinating my arrival time with the check in time.

I prefer to book my own travel and get reimbursed.  The very best conferences simply give me a lump sum for travel, then I simply book based on my own preferences and don’t have to bother with receipts and expense forms.

What makes my Audience happy?

At a basic level, they are here to see and hear me. Having a lectern at a normal height with flattering lighting helps.  Being able to get in to the venue at least one hour prior to my talk, so that I can test projection from my laptop, sound (including sound from my presentation), internet access and familiarize myself with the venue in general really helps to put be as ease.

If I don’t have to worry about hydration (lectern is refreshed with water and glasses after each speaker) that is also helpful.

Having electrical convertors (US to this country), leveler microphones and a monitor with a timer are small, but important aspects to me being able to deliver my talk successfully.

When I am at ease, the audience is at ease. It’s really that simple.

Looking Forward

For me, it really comes down to time.  How much time to travel to a country?  How much time to prepare for my talk or keynote?

Also what is the impact of my talk?  Will it be recorded?  What is the quality of the video and audio? How will the conference post my talk?  Will it be available to anyone, i.e. not behind a paywall?

Details do matter and there are a fair number of conferences that I’ve spoken at that I simply won’t return to because various details (that I’ve mentioned in this post) aren’t taken care of by the conference.

That being said, you may wonder if I’ve had any exceptional experiences in my years of speaking globally.  I have – without question the best experiences I’ve had as a speaker were keynoting a series of YOW Conferences in APAC in 2017.  Dave Thomas and his team provide an outstanding experience for all invited speakers.  They take care of every detail and speakers simply show up to travel and speak.  Additionally, his team plans dinners and activities for international speakers during the 3-city fall conference season (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane).

I would like to encourage more speakers to share positive experiences they have had in speaking around the world, in the spirit of sharing information to improve the situation for all of our community.

What if math were taught differently to middle-school aged kids? How did you learn algebra?  Do you remember?  Wasn’t it something like this: “Find the common factors of 4x + x^2  and then solve it for y?”  How about your kids?  Are they learning the same way? Are they enjoying it?

Now imagine something like this: “Take a look at this drawing of your city and tell me how much it would cost for gasoline in the car for your mom to drive you to school and then herself to work for one month.  Also, tell me how she might pay less money to get you to school and herself to work, i.e. by taking the train, carpooling.”

Yes, experience-based algebra.  Math in, from and for the real world.  Is this some kind of dream?

Well, I used to think so, then, much to my delight, I happened on this type of math education in Bangalore, India at a new start-up called BrainStars.

During my recent speaking trip there, I wanted to connect with local, open-source developers.  I have discovered through my travels, that visiting a co-working space or two is a great place to connect.  To that end, I located Jaaga.in in Bangalore and noted a launch event for a new, educational startup called BrainStars there.

I contacted the organizers and asked if I could visit their offices in order to understand what they were launching at the event. At the offices, I got introduced to their first product.  It’s called Number Nagar.

In the heart of ‘old Bangalore’ I spent a day with the founder of BrainStars and his team.  Ravi Shankar Ramalingaiah explained the theoretical concepts behind BrainStars, then he spent some time taking me through the model classroom on site for Number Nagar.

He led me through many of the core activities that he and his team have developed to teach math to children in grades 3 to 8.

Here’s what I learned….

Ravi is creating courseware that is hyper-local – ‘Nagar’ means city in the local dialect (Kannada) and one of his many activities starts with a cool map of ‘mathematical’ Bangalore, from a child’s perspective.

The classroom space is a filled with an activity areas with items, such as a history wall, with the zero suitcase and more.  These items are designed to spark experiential mathematic conversations and activities.  Here are some pictures of the classroom.  First up is the city map.

Here’s the Pi pillar – used for teaching / understanding how the concept of Pi has evolved over time.

The teaching tree extends into 3D space – even using the ceiling to teach!

In addition to spending time with Ravi and his team, Llewellyn and I also did attend the Number Nagar launch event at the co-working space Jaaga.in later in the week.  It was enlightening to be led through activities with other interested adults and kids by BrainStars-trained teachers.  I found all of the teachers to be engaging and well-qualified.  The audience responded with delight too!

Ravi’s model is for-profit and Number Nagar is the first set of curriculum, teacher-training and classroom environments that his start-up (BrainStars) will offer to schools, after-school programs and homeschooling parents.  Ravi advised me that his team is already at work on applying this experience-based approach to teaching and learning to other domains – next up is science.  I can’t wait to see what they will build next.

Probably the strongest endorsement of BrainStars that I can give is that I am working to bring it my daughter’s own school.  If successful, we will be the first school in the US to use this innovate approach.  I’ll keep you posted.

If you’d like to learn more here is the main BrainStars site and here is the contact information.

I’ll close with a bit of fun – in additional to innovation and excellence, NumberNagar also has a theme song – it’s cool and catchy and local (mostly in the Kannada language – the local Indian dialect of Bangalore).

The NumberNagar Song

Nodu baa NumberNagar| Aadu baa NumberNagar
Auto hatkond, meter haakond, Archimedes circleninda
Pythagoras Palyag hogi, Full meals hodeyoNa.
Guass galeeli toorikonDu, Ramanujan series kanDu
Gandhi Bazaar dose tindu lekka haakona
Nodu baa NumberNagar| Aadu baa NumberNagar
Chakradalli circles yella |gaalipatadal angles yella
Paani puri gaadiyalli Quadrilateral haaduthaithe
Beralal saavra gatle number| Zero story on a paper
Clocksnalli centuries and millennia haaduthaithe
Nodu baa NumberNagar| Aadu baa NumberNagar
Mathadi math aadi Everybody
NumberNagar – A MATH ACTIVITY CENTRE

Here’s a link to the song – enjoy!

Among the many professional activities I am considering and doing post holiday, is one that more of my colleagues – particularly women colleagues, should consider doing.  By that, I mean submit to speak at conferences in 2012 around your area(s) of technical expertise.

Because I am stepping beyond my comfortable confines of Microsoft technologies, in particular, I am now working with noSQL databases.  I have decided that it will push me even further to also SPEAK on these new (to me) technologies.  To that end I have submitted to the following conferences already in 2012:

–Agile2012 (on the open source unit testing library ApprovalTests)
–CS&IT2012 (on creating the Intentional Method of Teaching Kids to Program)
–Strata 2012 (on BigData for BI Professionals)
–OsCon 2012 (on harnessing world-wide contributions via smart pair programming to improve open source projects)
–SQLSaturday120 (on noSQL for SQL DBAs)

So, here’s my call to action for you:

1) Make a list of technologies you love (and I assume you are presently working in)

2) Talk to your colleagues about what they have learned from working with you.

3) Start small – 15 to 30 minutes, single topic.  Write your presentation, you can use powerpoint, Prezi, notepad, anything…just get your thoughts down.  Write some sample code or build a small sample application too.

4) Give your presentation to one or more of your technical friends, improve it, based on their suggestions.

5) Give your session again – a user group is a great place to do this.  If possible, also have someone record it.  You may also want to have a co-speaker join you.  They can ‘interview you’ to help keep you on track.  Also they can ‘watch the audience’ for understanding and help to facilitate (translate) questions.  You can also hand out paper evaluation forms or use online evaluations (like SurveyMonkey) – ask for feedback!

6) Post online content, post your slides to slideshare, post some or all of your talk to YouTube.  Blog about it.  Post your code to Git, SourceForge, CodePlex, etc…

6) Submit your session to one or more regional conferences.   CodeCamps are great for this!  Also *Saturdays, such as SQLSaturdays, SharePointSaturdays, etc…Again, make sure to read (and act on) all of the suggestions in your post-event surveys.

7) Get to know your local contacts for any vendor software you may be talking about, i.e. AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc… all have local developer advocates in most major markets.  ASK them to help you get accepted to speak at regional and national conferences.

8) Submit to a national conference. You are ready now, believe me.  I should know.   It is always best if you can ATTEND a conference at least once before submitting, however if this is not possible, then spend quite a bit of time looking at past presentations on the conference website from previous years.  Prepare to get rejected.  I get rejected at over 50% of the conferences I submitted to.  That’s the way it goes, accept it.  If you do get rejected, ask the organizers for more feedback, i.e. what they were looking for that was missing from your proposal.

9) After you have a good track record speaking at national conferences, ASK to be part of conference keynotes.  Again, from personal experience, I will tell you that you will rarely get invited at first.  However, AFTER you deliver one or more successful conference keynotes, then you will have a new problem (and a good one!) you will have more invitations than you can accept.

There is only one way to change the remarkably small showing of technical women speaking at conferences.  I am doing my part, are you?

Good luck and I hope to see you on stage at the next conference.  If I can help in any way, please ping me via this blog.