Later this week, I’ll be giving a conference talk at Open Source North. I’m excited to go to the conference and give the talk, but I can’t help but also admit that I feel very anxious. In my career, I am, first and foremost, an engineer. I love building software. I love experimenting with new technologies and seeing how they could solve interesting problems. But, over the last five-ish years, I’ve expanded my career it lots of non-engineering paths.
Since joining Grafana Labs, I’ve tried to spend a lot of time with our users, both OSS and commercial users. It’s been very engaging and useful for getting direct feedback on the work that I produce. I love the feeling when I provide a solution and I can sense the excitement on the other end of the conference call. For over a year, I’ve run the Kubernetes Monitoring Public Office Hours, where I presented the roadmap for the Kubernetes Monitoring Helm chart and opened it up for live questions. It can be intimidating, but I’ve found it to be so rewarding. I like to joke that I’m pretending to be a Developer Advocate.
So, dipping my toe into the world of public speaking might naturally follow from learning how much I enjoy these things. But that hasn’t stopped me from still stressing about it, and fighting major cases of imposter syndrome.
Upcoming talk
Earlier this year, back solidly in our Minnesota winter, I was sitting in a bus with a bunch of kids on our way to go skiing with my daughter’s school. I signed up to be a chaperone, which allowed me to ski around and keep an eye on them, but they made my job easy. They’re good kids. Anyway, on the bus ride, I saw the CFP for Open Source North was about to close. It’s one of my favorite conferences, and I’ve gone there nearly every year for about a decade. I gave a talk there last year, which went well. So, I figured I’d give it a shot and see if they’d entertain another talk.
I whipped up a CFP about a topic that I’ve been thinking about, and one that I think might be enjoyable for folks to view, and submitted it. A little while later, I was ecstatic to see that it was accepted and I’d be going and representing Grafana at the conference again! So, here’s where I am now. I’ll be giving a talk about the dashboards that I’ve built over several years, and the lessons I’ve learned from making them. I’m happy with how it’s shaping up, and it’ll be fun to share that with the folks that come to watch.
Why I do it
Honestly, a lot of this stuff doesn’t come naturally, and it always feels like I’m stretching and pushing into uncomfortable territory. When I gave my first talk, I stressed about it and worked my butt off to get the slides just right. I rehearsed over and over, and the talk went well. Afterwards, I was talking to my Product Manager and friend Vasil and said “I don’t know if this is for me,” and he said, “Do it at least three times. Then you can make a decision.”
I’ve discovered that throughout my career, I really love building community. I learned that long ago when I was at Symantec, building connections to other engineers inside the same office building. I learned it at Pivotal and VMware working directly with partner companies. And I’ve embraced it at Grafana Labs, running the office hours, working conference booths, and talking to other engineers who are just as excited as I am about making cool software.
So, to a point, giving conference talks is a way to be in the community and share some things that I find interesting and helpful. I’m still determining what I “want to be when I grow up”, and maybe conference talks are a part of it that I will continue to grow and enjoy, or maybe they aren’t and I’ll find another way to be an enthusiastic member of the engineering community.
In any case, I hope that this post helps anyone that might be considering giving a conference talk. Even if you think you’d never do something like that, you just might be surprised in the future. I know I would have never predicted that I’d be doing this if you asked me a decade ago.
Here goes nothing!
Cover photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash.