I am curios as to how people find ideas for presentations on meetups and conferences?
Some of the stuff I would like to talk about was already done by someone else. I don’t have much experience in public speaking and such, only a few local meetups and internal company ones. I spoke at Free Code Camp Sarajevo meetup about freelancing a few years ago and it was very well received.
The second talk I tried was also at a local meetup (OpenWeb Sarajevo) it was okay, but, also kind of meh, I talked about 100DaysOfCode challenge, I guess it wasn’t that interesting for the listeners.
My third talk was at an internal company meetup, the HR did let me title my talk as “How NOT to Pass the ISTQB exam” so I wrote a blog with that title afterwards instead.
In the meantime I submitted a talk for a local Microsoft conference, it got accepted, but, as luck would have it the conference got rescheduled twice due to Corona.
Right now I’m trying to find ideas (time and will as well) to get back in the game and speak at some online meetups, preferably on testing relegated topics.
From what I’ve noticed, talking about topics derived from personal experience works best. On the personal side, that is my favourite kind of talks to listen to, in general. But I think you got to strike a balance between just ranting about personal opinions and such, and offer some beneficial advice to the audience.
I’d love to hear for others from the community about your speaking experiences, tips & tricks, etc.
One of the things that I look for in giving a talk/workshop in a meetup or evening session is rarity.
I’ve giving talks about: Mutation Testing, Model Based Testing, Testing of Machine Learning Models. These are things that are pretty rare in my environment and I personally think everybody should know more about it.
A cool concept/tips & tricks is also a nice thing to share, if you find a solution to something, a certain part within a framework, … . It doesn’t have to be a full talk, we have lightning talks & snack time’s also which last ~ 7 minutes.
I just hear stuff, google it and learn about it. Afterwards I try to share my findings.
I’m just very curious and it kind of helps me finding topics.
I’ve presented on soft skill topics at two conferences.
When I first moved to Testing, I was intrigued at how social it is. But some team members don’t always see a Tester as part of a project team.
My presentations focused on team building, encouraging Testers to learn to read code, and demonstrating value not just in a testing phase (do those still exist?) but in design and development phases as well.
First of all I write and contemplate a lot When I have 3-4 blog posts on the same theme - that could be the start of a talk proposal.
Secondly I consider what can be told in written format as to compare with what can be told with visuals, stories, anecdotes in an engaging way. Most of a talk is entertainment, but there needs to be a story and an engagement. No one wants to listen to someone simple talking to himself.
Talk about a problem you had and how you overcame that. Or if you did something totally out of the ordinary. did you know you could …?
@mirza I also invite you to make a racket about this topic
if someone else want to join DM me we can synchronize together! This topic is really inspiring and lots of ideas are there
so I wrote a blog with that title afterwards instead.
When I have 3-4 blog posts on the same theme - that could be the start of a talk proposal.
emoji bug story was one of the best things I heard in a long while, it cracked me up big time! 