Public

you curse your foolishness for seeking the footer on a modern website, when you're certainly old enough (or perhaps young enough!) to have learned that websites no longer care to provide organized and useful information to their users, nor do they care for their users at all.

Is it worth it? Conference talks are a tremendous amount of work. For my React Europe 2018 talk, I estimate that I spent over 150 hours on the talk; it consumed my mornings and weekends for a couple months. Assuming you make the median US software engineering salary of $104,000 a year, and put 150 hours of work into the talk, you’ve spent $7500 worth of your time getting it ready. In addition, preparing a talk is a bumpy ride. There’s a bunch of stress along the way, a bunch of nights and weekends where you really don’t feel like working on it but do anyway, moments of crisis where you think your talk won’t work or isn’t interesting. For all of that, conference talks tend to reach a surprisingly small audience. Most conference talks will be seen by a few hundred people live, and maybe another 1000 through the recording. Most of my blog posts get more views than that, and they take way less time to produce. So on its face, the math doesn’t look favourable. Why spend so much time and energy on a conference presentation? In my opinion, there are a few things that balance the scales: While relatively few people will see a conference talk, it can be a very impactful way to deliver a message. A well-crafted talk can inspire and motivate someone far more effectively than a tweet or blog post! For example, CodeSandbox(opens in new tab) was created by Ives Van Hoorne(opens in new tab) after attending React Europe, and he credits(opens in new tab) the conference with making him determined to build it! You get to hang out with the other speakers. In many cases, these are the authors of the tools you use every day, or people whose work has inspired you for years. It’s a tremendous way to make new friends who share your interests. After a conference talk, expect tons of folks to come up and ask pertinent follow-ups, or share some of the interesting things they’ve been doing. Speaking at a conference makes people think that you’re a Real Expert™. It lends authority to what you’re saying. It can help you in your career for years to come. It’s an experience. It’s a memory that you’ll have for the rest of your life, a Youtube video you’ll be able to watch when you're older. It’s a heck of a thing!

An update in 2020 I originally published this blog post in mid-2018. It's 2 years later, and I thought I'd include some additional things I've learned in the interim. Don't overcommit yourself. I've found that the sweet spot for me is to prepare 1 conference talk a year, and maybe present it 2-4 times. I will never prepare multiple conference talks a year again, it takes too much time. "Re-use" content across multiple mediums. That conference talk you created would probably make an excellent blog post or tutorial! You've already done the work of researching and preparing and creating demos; there's more juice to be squeezed out of that orange! Research the conferences before applying to them. Do they have a track record of shady practices? Are they doing work to ensure that the speaker lineup is diverse? In a very real way, the speakers represent the conference. Make sure it's an organization you feel comfortable representing. Aside from those points, my overall viewpoint hasn't changed much. Conference talks are a ton of work, but they're also very rewarding. I'd encourage anybody who is interested in it to give it a shot!

I’ll have a kilo of whatever goes in the Igalia bong.

If we make it so that you have to understand programming to even start, then we take something open and enabling, and place it back in the hands of those who are already privileged.