>> Write a talk nobody else could do; tell a story nobody else can tell. Figure out what your audience is going to learn, and why you’re the best person to teach them that.
One of the best topics for new speakers is "here's what I learned when I built project X".
Nobody else in the world could give that talk, because they didn't build that project.
It doesn't matter if you're not presenting anything that's ground breaking and new - what's important is that your audience gets to benefit from the same lessons that you learned.
Even if some members of the audience already knew those lessons, hearing a new way of explaining them - with new supporting stories - is still valuable.
The bar is there, but it is lower than you expect. If you have a truly unique point of view to express, that brings some value to the table, slots will open up.
And I've spoken at plenty of conferences. :) Not always in the glamour rooms/slots. But... I did have one talk fill a room out the door. That was a talk on a difficult/controversial topic, and by then... I was probably about as expert as they came on the issue.
I didn't start with that though. I just started with a simple point of view talk. And I'd argue the second version of that talk is still one of the best I've given in my life.
That doesn't mean every talk has to be unique and special. An "introduction to XYZ" talk may have a bunch of equally valid speakers, which all naturally provide a slightly different angle and there is a bunch of factors going in the decision about who gets the slot.
Some talks are plain craftswork, not unique experiences and still very worthwhile.
It can. But I don't want to compete for my slot with others who can give the same talk, or a talk that is similar.
I want to make the conference committee choose between "Do we want ilc's talk on X." or "Do we want foo's talk on Y." If we are both discussing the same thing, if I'm unknown, I will lose. OTOH, if I have something interesting to talk about... I have 2 routes to "victory". "ilc gives great talks, he gets good grades and is working on his skills." and "Man that's a damn cool topic. We want that at our conference, even if ilc isn't the BEST speaker, the combo is better."
I didn't start out as the best presenter. I learned. But I always knew I had to have an interesting topic, something that made it worth them giving me a slot.
I don't think the author meant that you have to be the world leading expert at any topic. You can be pretty average, but you need to give it your personal twist. He is warning against very generic abstract talks that can be replaced by reading a man page.
That's how I read it as well. I think it's wrong because I've learned the most from people one step ahead of me. Experts who are ten steps ahead have the curse of knowledge: it's extra hard to figure out what things make sense to a conference audience. Many presentations go too fast and then too slow two minutes later
Someone who just learned a thing is in the best position to give you the diff to learn it as well. At least, that was my experience running a blog as a teenager. I wrote about cool things I just learned or realised and people found that useful
Edited to add: Also, impostor syndrome. With this as the "first step" advise, you'll select people who are full of themselves and nobody else would give presentations unless their topic is super niche (not useful for most people) or they got lucky to see some big story up close (if you had a front seat during a Github outage, say). The latter is both interesting and fun but it's not the only type of talk I want to see
No, it's about perspective - I know that 'cos I wrote the article, but perhaps it didn't come across very clearly!
Here's the specific problem that advice is intended to remedy, which I have seen happen many, many times:
Somebody writes a talk about, say, what's new in C# 13. It's a solid talk: they've done the research, they've prepared some good demos. At local user groups, it does very well. At regional and community conferences, it does very well.
But it doesn't have any personality. It's not a case study. It's not based on using those features in production, or applying them to a specific domain. The presenter has read all the docs, run all the examples, maybe found an edge case or two, and put together a decent slide deck and some engaging demos - but even if they've done a fantastic job, there are a thousand other tech presenters out there who could do exactly the same thing.
They then start submitting that talk to big conferences which have a .NET track, and it never gets accepted.
Why? Because those conferences have people like Mads Torgersen, the actual lead designer of C# at Microsoft, on speed dial. If NDC Oslo or CraftConf or Yow! wants to fly somebody in to talk about what's new in C#, they can get the person who wrote those docs to do it.
Now, consider that talk was "how I used C# 13 to rebuild my smart home dashboard", or "how my team used C# 13 to save $5000 a month in AWS bills", or "I built an online game server using C# 13". Those kinds of talks do well because they have personality; there's more there than just the technology itself.
That's what I mean by "a story nobody else can tell" - it's a presentation that's anchored in the speaker's own real world experience; detail and context that hitherto only existed in their head.
I run presentation workshops for software professionals, and one of the things I ask my students to do is to come up with something - doesn't have to be tech-related - that they know better than anybody else in the group. We've had folks talk about how to cook ragu, how to surf on a longboard, how to get their kid to fall asleep ("literally nobody else in the world can do this, not even my wife"), and it is always remarkable to me how much more engaging and animated people become when they are telling their own story rather than paraphrasing research.
It's doable if you pick a very focused topic. In my first year of using Julia, I gave a talk on gradually adding Julia to a large Python codebase. Very few people could give a similar talk because (1) Julia is a fairly niche language, (2) most of the people who understood Julia <> Python interop knew it too well, and had forgotten all the common beginner challenges.
It is an extremely high bar if you aim for super popular topics.
You might want to spend time on some niche topic and there might be people who don’t have time to dabble in that topic but would be happy if someone did it for them.
I wouldn't expect that most people couldn't, with enough time and resources, tell a better story. Isn't the part of the point of giving a talk to convey the ideas so that other people can use them? If they've internalized the ideas and seen your presentation, can't they then improve it and give a better talk? Haven't you failed if they can't do that?
Does me being the best person to teach them matter? Doesn't it matter more that I am the person teaching them when no one else is?
There's room for personalization, making sure the talk compliments your style and gives insight into why you think it's important and how you solved it, but none of this really relies on the uniqueness of the person.
If Stallman got up and gave a talk on "what it's like to be me", I would find it much less interesting than a talk about "how to invent free software and build a movement around it".
Stallman can give a talk about "how to invent free software and build a movement around it" because Stallman has invented free software and built a movement around it. For Stallman, there is a significant overlap between "what it's like to be me" and "how to invent free software" - his version of that story is exactly the story nobody else can tell.
It's not about telling a better story. It's about telling a story better.
Why the downvotes for this guy? The article makes the specific claim that the flu death numbers are allowed to be inflated through lax CDC reporting rules so that people are encouraged to get vaccinated and practice good hygiene.
>> And it’s hard to read Republican’s sudden enthusiasm for tree planting as anything other than a cynical effort to dampen growing calls for the sorts of regulations and taxes required to bring about those changes.
Rather than going scorched earth on common-ground, why not see it as a stepping-stone, an opportunity to draw the other side toward your way of seeing things... and maybe even suggest more small, achievable steps for the other side to move in your direction rather than pulling out a cudgel?
Probably so, but when someone steps in the direction you want them to go, its not effective to whack them for it. If you want them to continue down your path you say "Well done! But, can you take just one more small step?"
The hope is that these steps accumulate into something meaningful. A virtuous upward spiral.
There is evidence that performing minor activities like tree planting actually reduces willingness to take meaningful action against climate change. This is called the 'low cost' hypothesis [1].
If you wanted to reduce public pressure against fossil fuels you would instigate something exactly like a tree planting program.
Treeplanting itself is of mixed usefulness. I've done some treeplanting, sometimes it's done well, native species are used, trees are planted properly in appropriate spots, other times, no care in tree selection is used, and introduced/invasive or just unsuitable trees are planted, trees are planted inmproperly or in locations where they won't grow and a lot of money and time ends up wasted for no benefits.
Can I assume you are also opposed to straw and plastic bag bans? Unlike tree planting which at least does something, those bans are almost entirely worthless.
Bans on straws and plastic bags have a direct measurable impact on local marine wildlife and in the reduction of microplastics.
Now that Asian countries are introducing bans, we should start seeing slowing microplastic accumulation. Within a decade microplastic accumulation should peak. By then we'll have more efficient means of addressing microplastic pollution.
One point not often brought up is that microplastics in the ocean contribute to ocean temperature rise, since the plastics are able to retain (and thus radiate) more thermal energy. This one of the reasons the great garbage patches are hypoxic--warmer water holds less oxygen.
> The hope is that these steps accumulate into something meaningful. A virtuous upward spiral.
Or, if let's say the other side isn't working in good faith, they could then hold it up as "proof" they have done their part and ride that "effort" for another 30-40 years.
We want people to feel good about positive actions taken so when we have to pressure them again they have a reason to care and turn about. Any positive movement means they're slipping, realize they're slipping and have to do something to appease critics. But doing too little makes them a hypocrite and opens them to additional criticism. Which this article is an example of.
If I'm damned either way I'm going to go to hell doing as I please.
If you mean the environmentalists and nuclear power, I agree. Nuclear power really is the only serious answer to climate change.
It's hard to know if climate change would even be an issue if protesters of the 70s, 80s, and 90s wouldn't have made any investment into nuclear power so difficult.
Stepping stones would have worked 40 years ago. We are at the precipice now and must take radical action if we are to mitigate the damage that is baked into the current climate model given the carbon ppm levels we're at now.
Bah, humbug. You still have to be nice and compromise, you can't just expect everyone to go along.
Frankly, the science isn't settled, it's such terrible rhetoric. As though science settles things that can't actually be measured until they happen.
(Ah! Did you see that? Your radicalism made me defensive and elicited my extreme response! I'm not a denier, I just find uncompromising rhetoric deeply dysfunctional)
Cool, it doesn't matter, carbon doesn't care about your rhetorical exercises. We're heading towards an extinction event and once this realization reaches critical mass, it's going to get ugly.
If the ship is sinking you don't have to be nice and compromise with those bailing water into the ship. You have to tie them up and throw them below deck so they don't impede the bailing. Then afterwards you have up try them for mutiny.
Climate extremists (not you, but those who take this belief 2-3x further) are a major threat to modern civ. Who else fervently believes that killing off 50% of people on Earth and completely overturning the modern political-economic system is a better alternative than the status quo?
A few thoughts to add to the discussion, loosely related:
1) If I know exactly where to spend my time for the best rate of return, its likely that I'll have to spend relatively few hours achieving success.
2) For most people, the success they can achieve through just having a plain old job can be had for a mere 40 hours. Anything they want above what 40 hours can grant them should probably be done elsewhere (second job, side-hustle, etc) since the ROI will be very low for spending those additional hours at work.
3) The 80 hour week lifestyle is probably necessary for people who are still frantically doing what Felix Dennis calls "The Search", trying to build a company without the foggiest notion what people want.
"For creative work, you can't cheat. My believe is that there are 5 creative hours in everyone's day. All I ask of people at Shopify is that 4 of those are channeled into the company."
5 creative hours in a day absolutely matches my experience based on my own career. I can get a HUGE amount done in those 5 hours if I apply them sensibly.
Work isn't always creative though is it? It's often more menial: meetings, learning new APIs, stepping through existing code, trial and error, mentoring, etc.
For these your ROI per hour goes down, but your total ROI still goes up even after 5 or even 8 hours. Maybe not for everyone everyday, but for some people some days for sure.
My experience/conclusions are similar to the comment above.
I feel like the hardest skill in jobs like programming, design (or any creative jobs, to be fair) is managing your cognitive resources, understanding when to approach problems requiring particular modes of thinking and when to stop, work on something else, or learn to do nothing.
In my mid 20s I did my share of reckless 80-100h weeks—ending up with depression and health issues that took years to recover. Some days are still challenging. And, I’m just 31.
No. He is not asking for 4 hours of work.
He is asking for laser-focused, 100% productive 4 hours work.
You can do additional work in the rest of the hours left that not necessarily is going to require that level of focus.
> My believe is that there are 5 creative hours in everyone's day. All I ask of people at Shopify is that 4 of those are channeled into the company.
> Now true - some people, myself included, need a few hours to wind up and wind down for those to occur. Right now I'm procrastinating on twitter instead of writing my summit talk for instance. Reddit and HN are my siren calls.
> That's fine. We are not moist robots. We are people and people are awesome. What's even better than people are teams. Friends, that go on journeys doing difficult things.
While I'm sure they want people to do some non-creactive work - it sounds like in principle they'd be fine with 20 hours of focused creative work. Maybe a 6 hour day, to put in 4 hours of work?
I think some of it has to be taken as more of an adage than pragmatically. Firsly, the four hours may not be continuous so having random hours doesn't really work. Additionally, it's caveated with creative work, regardless of job title, a lot of work would involve non-creative aspects which need to be done.
Because there's meetings, email, IMs, documentation, waiting, etc. The rough breakdown is 20 hours of focused creative work and 20 hours of everything else per week.
I think he's assuming that people are going to spend some fraction of their time at work advancing their careers and maintaining their relationships with coworkers (and that he does not include that time as "creative work").
I agree and regarding 3) would you put most startup founders into this bucket? In reading Peter Thiel Zero to One I was struck by his point that real power law focus in a startup means you're doing something new, thus "The Search" is a required first step even if it's not your first rodeo.
I would suspect its true that most successful startup founders fall into the 80+ hour bucket, but I only have a handful of personal anecdata to support this (and for technical founders in the early days probably only 1/4 of that would be considered work, the rest being just an intense form of play!).
Re: Thiel, wasn't the point of that power law section meant to say that each founder should focus on what gives them leverage? I don't recall correctly.
"The Search" is the discovery of those things outside of your normal circles of concern, which makes it doubly-difficult to find _on purpose_. Felix Dennis describes the process more akin to an aware predator waiting for something to enter its kill-zone.
>> I guess this is what it feels like to be a young-earth creationist: I simply cannot wrap my head around...
You think you're picking on an easy target there, but if you talked to some, you might actually find a few that will talk about young-earth creationism in the context of something interesting like Einsteins theories of gravitational time dilation. Had an engineering professor like this.
Call it cognitive dissonance or not, but it seems pretty normal to be able to hold two concepts in one's head, even ones that seem to conflict... with the hopes of one day reconciling them.
This is pretty much every company. If everyone starts performing at the next level, you can't promote everyone, right? And plenty of things can squish your chances at promotion, like being somewhat unlikable in your group.
I think a better bet for spending your extra energy is often a side-hustle, like contracting.
This is all based on the toxic and feudal idea that there should be a strict hierarchy of authority and pay that is narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. Each layer of employees should have a smaller layer of higher-paid overseers, going all the way up to the king (CEO).
4% sounds optimistic, but its good to have a canvas to paint on.
Potential bad effects from the top of my noggin:
* You've compressed the compounding growth in prices (inflation) by two years in one stroke.
* You've instantly decreased the buying power of a lot of people; worst affected are those not affected by the bump (recipients of disability, recipients of social security)
* Fun addenda: You've set the precedent for a 100% bump from the current federal rate, and its more likely to happen again, once more compressing the inflation timeline and further pressuring people that don't work a waged job.
Oh, and the reason putting pressure on inflation like this is bad is that it discourages investment, which leads to weakened economies.
Some people would, yes. Especially rudimentary single shot weapons. However, its much harder to make a reliable gun than it is to make reliable tough encryption. There are designs available for both and there always will be, illegal or not. But making a gun is manufacturing whereas using encryption would just require installing some software. Trivial.
I want to point out, that manufacturing a gun is not "non-trivial".
Given blueprints, (publicly available) or a template and accurate enough measures, a lathe, and a mill, anyone can make a firearm or parts for one in their garage.
Is there reading involved? Yes. But any argument you make w.r.t. The futility of illegalizing encryption is immediately portable to firearms manufacture.
I mean... manufacturing a working modern firearm in their garage is probably much more achievable to the general population than rolling out any kind of encryption software. Anyone with some basic hands-on competency can make a gun.
All you really need is a drill press and some basic tools. People made Sten guns in WWII and that's still a perfectly valid firearm design (fully automatic even) that requires almost no work to make.
Given that I have many, many crypto libraries in many many devices, some of which are heavily modified, chances of me even being able to replace those with broken crypto libraries is like... 0. Many people are in a similar situation, so I don't understand how we could even comply with a law like that if we wanted to (which we don't). So yeah, not only trivial to retain unbroken crypto, but nearly impossible to get rid of it.
Sure, and you'd be hard pressed to get a lot of people to give up firearms they already own. If you sent agents door to door, statistically some result in conflicts to the death with people that weeks earlier were considered law abiding.
Can you imagine asking every gun owner/computer owner to go to their local police station to surrender their guns/functional encryption?
That would be pretty spooky to me.
Not trying to make this a gun control debate, but for the longest time encryption was considered a munition, so it's not THAT non sequitur.
Ok, I believe we are in the middle of arguing OP's point about how the pro-gun people are wrong when using the argument "only the criminals will own them", and how the pro-encryption people are right when using the same argument about encryption.
And, I think what you're adding here is that I've got an error in my statement that both parties will happily build their own firearms/encryption because the physical gun is harder to distribute than a copy of software.
And I agree in principle with this, until I realize that broad distribution of an encryption mechanism is exactly what a bad-acting government would want... crack once and everyone is compromised.
So, no, I think I would argue that its easier to distribute weapons than good, bespoke encryption.
And further, I would argue that if it is true for encryption, it is also true for firearms... that if they are outlawed, the power shifts to criminals as they will still use them.
The argument is a tautology, it can't be wrong! If guns ownership is a crime, then owning a gun makes you a criminal.
The tautology is compatible with the hypothesis that if guns were confiscated and illegal, eventually there would be a decrease in the amount of people getting shot. Probably an increase for a while as confiscation attempts resulted in agents getting in gun battles with people who don't want to surrender their property.
Whether the loss in life and liberty is worth the outcome is a matter of personal taste.
Sure, the saying has broad appeal because the tautology of it is interesting. The actual debate, however, centers on whether laying down your weapons makes you vulnerable to those that hold onto theirs.. and that was the lens I was looking through.
That's an extremely high bar, no?