Lost in the Source #4

Hear ye, hear ye!

When people think developer they usually picture one of two things. Either someone like this guy

or someone like this guy

In real life, being a developer has elements of both these guys and yesterday I was Tony Stark (without the money and cool inventions).

Tony is charming and personable and an amazing public speaker, and a lot of software development includes public speaking. Be it in front of your team in a meeting or at some fancy conference in the middle of the desert. You need to be able to explain and defend your ideas and code choices and that usually involves standing in front of a group of people and, well, talking about it.

Yesterday I didn’t have to defend any of my own code, but I did give my first proper technical talk. It was on Rails (with a bit of Ruby littered in there too) and was aimed at beginners for Women Who Code London. I’ve done a lot of public speaking over the years and last year I was invited to speak at DIY Culture fair but this was different. I was essentially teaching a group of women who knew nothing about Ruby or Rails, I had to make it engaging, easy to follow, and make sure I was saying the right thing and I had to do it all in 20mins or under. I also added a little bit of live coding, to spice things up. On top of that, there were people in the room who were more senior than I and could have easily called me out if I was saying the wrong thing. It was tough but I did it, and I’m super glad that I did. The ladies enjoyed it and although it was a lot to grasp at one time, it did good to serve up a foundation and give them cues for when they started building their own Rails apps. The organiser was pleased as were the women who came to learn and that made my week.

Today I got an email from the husband of a woman who was at the event, he thanked me for inspiring his wife. So, I might take this public speaking thing a bit more seriously.