"It worked last night, I promise.”
Last week, I presented my crazy blockchain-redux idea at WeAreDevs world congress, a conference of 8,000 people.
One person called it refreshing; another said it's the first time they’d seen an idea, not a product, at a conference. 💪
Of course, the next related video YouTube shows after my vlog about preparing for the talk is Tim Urban's Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator. 🤔
Their AI be good 😅
Anyway, here's some stuff I learned at We Are Developers 2018 →
- You can prepare a talk in 3 days at the tail end of 3 months of casual research, but you probably shouldn't
- The best talks are built like a standup routine on top of a life well lived
- Woz is cool but kind of a strange person. His insights are curious
- There are waaaaay more VR devices out there than you'd think
- Now is a good time to get into VR
- You can have 100,000 monthly active users with a few Alexa skills
- Only those Alexa skills promoted by Amazon will live. Others die
- If you are presenting, put your handle on every slide so people know how to quote you when they post photos on social media
- 8000 people is too big and intimidating for effective Meet New People activities. Hard to strike up random conversations when there's nothing intrinsically in common other than "We both write code"
- Blockchain/crypto is a cult
- Vienna is beautiful. Go visit
- You write code that runs in the future, it is therefore de facto legislature
- Developers might be the only profession that doesn't even pretend to know what we're doing. We just dive right in and figure it out.
- Woz says managing is easier than coding, and it's unclear whether that was a joke, honest opinion, or pandering to the crowd
- Also company values without action are bullshit
- Oh, and Angular is doing some iiiiinteresting things with automatic code mods to make upgrading JavaScripts and such easier
Developers don’t even pretend to knoe what we’re doing. We dive in and fix problems with hammers and anger
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 18, 2018
~ @spolsky #WeAreDevs pic.twitter.com/lEy6QwxHJ4
Another thing I noticed at #WeAreDevs: Everything is English. Nobody is English.@ryanflorence once said how impressed he is by folks’ tech talks in their 2nd language.
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 18, 2018
In Europe it’s the norm. Speaker ain’t native, audience ain’t native, it all works.
#impressive
You can have 100,000 monthly active users with Alexa skills 😳
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 18, 2018
Protip for speakers I learned at #WeAreDevs:
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 18, 2018
Put your handle on every slide. We want to quote you and we forget your name in 5 seconds.
Company values without action are bullshit #WeAreDevs pic.twitter.com/oIA4hYA4kC
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 18, 2018
Software history is a pendulum between server and client@stephenfluin #WeAreDevs pic.twitter.com/HQ2eRwlnem
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 18, 2018
Wow there’s a lot more VR out there than I thought. Millions of devices pic.twitter.com/q5cP2U56de
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 16, 2018
Engineering is a young person’s game, you need mental energy. After a while you hsve to go into management, something easy.
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 16, 2018
~ Wozniak#WeAreDevs
You get a big room if you put enough buzzwords in your talk title.
That was a big room. Sweat poring down my back 😅
— Swizec Teller (@Swizec) May 18, 2018
I hope my crazy idea gave you some ideas #WeAreDevs pic.twitter.com/ogDRt9ZxmB
@swizec #wearedevs #wearedevelopers #blockchain #web #redux pic.twitter.com/n20lOyhy5V
— Dariusz Kalbarczyk (@ngKalbarczyk) May 18, 2018
Guess now I have to build the stuff I promised in my talk.
Continue reading about How I prepare for a talk at an 8,000 people conference
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