Scott ran across CFP Land a few months ago, and unlike 99% of subscribers, he reached out to chat. I really enjoy learning from and trading stories with other speakers, so I’m excited to bring his story to life here on the blog. Like many speakers I’ve interviewed, Scott started off reluctant to get on stage, but has turned one of his biggest weaknesses into an indispensable strength.

You did it! Your proposal was accepted and you’re officially in the conference program. Now what?

If you’re like me, you’ve been to hundreds of presentations (maybe even more) and you know exactly what makes a presentation memorable: it’s either REALLY good or REALLY bad. Content aside, it’s the presentation of your material that makes the most impact to a room full of eager, yet, potentially overwhelmed, conference-goers.

I believe that everyone has the ability to develop an aesthetic and engaging presentation that will be remembered, so I’ve put together some of my favorite tools to help you do just that. But, if you’re not quite ready to begin your slide deck yet, first check out my Guide to Preparing a Conference Presentation.

GOTO Chicago will be more accessible than ever now that it’s all online, so I’m excited to bring you a speaker story from one of the many great speakers scheduled for the event. Kirk Pepperdine sold the company he founded to Microsoft, and now helps build the Java experience for Azure.

Kirk has spoken at countless conferences (as evidenced by his trove of event badges), and is currently talking about performance tuning for Java. In his interview below, he talks about his current work, how he has built up a workshop over years, and what he’s learned about what people expect out of conference speakers. Read on for more of Kirk’s story.

With the global Covid 19 pandemic forcing the cancellation of thousands of conferences, meetups, and tradeshows across the world, you have probably already changed your plans because of the virus. I wanted to offer a little update on how I’m handling things with CFP Land, and what the current recommendations are for people like us who speak at conferences.

I recently mentioned on a podcast that Twilio was my favorite Developer Relations team, so when Phil Nash of Twilio mentioned CFP Land in a blog post he wrote, I knew I wanted to get his story up here.

As many conference speakers do, Phil has a passion for teaching people and sharing his knowledge. You see that in his talks as well as his contributions to open source and helpful blog posts. Read on for his perspective on speaking, technology, and the benefits that getting on stage has given his career.

With GOTO Chicago coming up in a few weeks, I wanted to highlight some of the many great speakers who will be on stage this year. I’m very excited to bring you Dean Wampler’s speaker story today.

Dean works in Developer Relations at Anyscale, and he’s been speaking at conferences for over 15 years. Hopefully some of his experience and advice can help you on your speaker’s journey, and don’t forget to check out his talk at GOTO Chicago in April.

Leading up to GOTO Chicago, I decided to reach out to some of the speakers who I was most excited to see this year. I’m really glad Danielle Pollard - a fellow Chicagoan - got back to me to share her story.

In addition to her professional work as an Agile Lead, Danielle has a passion for lifting up those in the community who most need help. While she’s relatively new at speaking at conferences, Danielle has been winning speaking competitions since grade school, so read on to hear some of her candid and helpful advice.

GOTO Chicago 2020 is coming up in just a few weeks, so I’m featuring some of the wonderful lineup of speakers that I’ll hopefully get to meet in person. Today, I’m happy to bring you Avdi Grimm, a Ruby developer and professional paired programmer who will be giving a talk on programming and philosophy (I love these kind of talks).

In this interview, Avdi shares some of his thoughts on how code is used as a model for life and the benefits he’s seen from 10 years of public speaking.

In preparation for GOTO Chicago 2020, I am talking to some of the conference’s speakers about how they got into speaking and what their advice is for new speakers. This week, I’m featuring my interview with Denise Yu, a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub who has found speaking to be a great springboard for her career in tech.

Like many speakers I’ve talked to over the past year, Denise comes from a nontraditional background, and is deeply passionate about helping other speakers get their starts. She also included some great recommendations for other speakers to watch, so be sure to look for that section towards the end.

This year, I’ll be attending GOTO Chicago, so leading up to the event, I wanted to highlight some of the speakers who will be presenting. I was really excited to hear from Bruce Lawson because HTML is such a core piece of technology for the web, but so many of us take it for granted. As a member of the W3C’s HTML5.3 specification team and writer on the topic, I knew Bruce would make for an interesting speaker to feature here.

Read on to hear about Bruce’s wide-ranging experience from music to acting to accessibility, and some of his tips for new speakers.