Skip to main content

Speaking at Develop Denver

I was delighted to be asked, what seems like ages ago, to submit to Develop Denver (https://developdenver.org/). I had gotten most of the way through the process to gain an internship, and had hit a snag on the housing. I was asked to make a GoFundMe (which I disliked - I always want to give back in kind!) , and made it, more than my goal - partly thanks to the community of developers that is out there on social media.

The internship fell through - my background was part of the issue. But that still left the invitation to submit that had come in during this - I would have been back in the area literally the day of the event. I couldn't talk on what I'd experienced, but I could talk about what I'd learned about hiring and myself during these three months.

Sounds easy? Not at all - as you know, the tech space shifts rapidly, and the hiring landscape moves slowly. Many of the answers in hiring have already been formulated, and the influx of new people, with different educational choices, was starting to show. The announcements from Google and Apple that a degree was no longer required got me thinking. How are companies handling this?

With social media, within hours I had many answers - not all of them useful. And a lot to think on, and add to my store of data to pull from. I heard from all sides of the table - employees that were trying to get hired, and had both good and bad experiences; employers who were trying to navigate the rules, regulations, and experiences that hiring has around it; and those that had given up on working - some that had resorted to freelance work, and others who had become so discouraged that they went into minimum wage jobs.

And, always, there were those out there that were happy to talk about their experiences, and to support the idea of a talk on these topics. And many requests for links - more than I would ever have anticipated.

The team this year had a new person, and was offering not only their time on Slack, but in-person workshops! You could meet the people that were thinking of submitting, and get some assistance on refining your topic, and how to present it. The group was excited about this, then I had to throw a monkey wrench in their plans (I'm a tester, this should have been expected): I wanted to attend remotely: I was a good two hours away from the live sessions.

Someone was generous enough to make their laptop available so I could attend - and I am so thankful for this. I got to hear live discussion of some topics that hadn't even crossed my mind, and the feedback to help focus the talk more clearly. I was surprised to discover that I could speak from an expert's point of view - not only were these my experiences, but I'd also worked in recruiting, and knew some of the headaches that a large disruption could cause.

The next few weeks were a flurry of preparation - another submission had been accepted, and they wanted a transcript and slides a month in advance. Thankfully, some of the slides could be reused for both talks: I was nervous enough about making them. I had advice from several sources, including two who do a lot of public speaking, and the wonderful folks in my Slack channels that also speak. Getting the slides to follow the 10/20/30 rule advocated by one person (10 slides for 20 minutes - no smaller than 30 point type) helped guide how much I was able to fit on each slide, and the community again was able to assist in making sure that the slides and images were not only free to use, but were visible to those who might have had vision problems.

I don't sign, but I knew those that were hard of hearing wouldn't have an issue: I had been on stage before without a microphone. Yes, I'm loud, at points.

The second get together - they now had adjusted their plans to include remote workshops (thank you all!) - I missed due to it being on the day the transcript was due, and a full-on panic about it. And it would have been valuable - helping people work through their openings and closings for impact, and making sure that you had the resources that were needed to make your talk a success. I could have asked for this, but was busy making sure I had a recording, and input from other people, and discovered I can't talk as well sitting down in a quiet room. Much to my distress - it cut into my practice time for both talks.

The cover picture is from my talk - I was delighted to have someone take that picture, even if I prefer to be on the other side of the camera under normal circumstances. The talk went well - my audience was outstanding, the room was open enough that I didn't feel crowded, and the questions after the talk helped me focus on the next one.

As always happens when you do something live, there were bobbles and errors. Most of them, I could recover from, and thankfully it was nothing technical. The pleasure of having an audience is something I enjoy - even one person that you feel you've been able to share a concept or an idea with is a great treasure of mine - and this group was giving that feedback quite frequently. They understood the errors - and wanted this to be a success. Thank s to them, it was - I still give myself a barely-passing grade.

If you ever get the chance to speak - I urge you to try it. You don't have to be up there alone, but finding that connection with your audience: being able to connect with them afterwards and hear their thoughts is such a delight.

Popular posts from this blog

30 Days of Postman - for Testers!

  https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-and-brown-cat-lying-beside-a-laptop-and-toys-5468268/ Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels   Working with developer- focused tools can be a challenge for some testers: we may know what the words mean, but haven't used those skills recently enough to make the tasks simple. Or we may not have ever used them, other than at a quick glance to make sure that what we are getting matches what it should be sending. And some give results that require us to go find another team member to help interpret the results. Being a more-independent tester has always been one of my goals - being able to use the tools that are common in the team, and be able to do at least basic tasks that support my tests with them. Our team used Postman for many of the API tasks that we had, so exploring this tool was a natural fit. There are alternatives it there, both graphical and command line, so feel free to explore! The items that you can do, and tools that help

Thanks Giving 2018

http://thriveology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ThankfulGrateful.jpg It is that season for we Americans: a time to look back at the past year, and count our blessings.  Thanksgiving has come to mean different things then while I was growing up - the focus is no longer on what has gone right, but what wrongs were (and, in some cases continue to be) done. I try and focus on what I can do to minimize the wrong, and accept that the past has happened. And then the fun begins - finding all the things to be thankful for! Things have been rocky, at points this year, I'm still unemployed for money, and have had some serious personal issues arise and be dealt with. But, all in all, I think the bad is outweighed by the good.  This has been a year of changes: not only have I given up on trying to go back to the way things used to be, I have moved forward - supported, encouraged, and occasionally pulled - into a future that I just now am starting to feel I deserve. I still am

Where Is It? Part 1 - Inputs

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels     I am job-searching, and running into some coding challenges. Most of them are simple - some seem to want one-line solutions that require two cups of coffee and a half-hour to figure out what they want. Others are far above where my skills lie, and these I give a try for, and learn. And then there are the ones that offer, seemingly randomly, a challenge - within my skills (or at least my research skills) - that could be used as part of a larger project that I want to work on. This was the case last week, when I tried for a position that was a bit above what I felt I could do comfortably. The challenge was to let someone enter items, and then give back their location. In a language I am just familiar enough to be a danger to myself in. Happily, and thinking forward about how I could use this as a part of a larger program that would  use something like this to interact with the user. And also, this is command line, and thinking of how to set this up to