Guidelines & Tips for Speaking at a Meetup

What Meetups have you gone to? How have they impacted your learning? How have you learned from other developers thus far in your tech career?

Chances are, you’ve learned from other developers’ talks and own discoveries in their learning. With this option, you can join the community through giving back. Speaking at a meetup is a very effective way to impart knowledge, gain experience speaking, and provide your career with some exposure.

How to Approach This

Pick a Meetup that you like

OR

Pick a Meetup that sounds interesting

OR

Look for kinds of topics have been covered at this Meetup recently – how could you contribute?

Utilize Your Network

Who do you know who is involved in See what other meetups that Turing community members are involved in

Prepare Your Talk

A great way to approach your talk is to utilize the format of “here’s what I learned when I tried to ___.” This is how you’ve learned from other developers and how they will learn from you.

More helpful prompts (from this article):

• What is the last thing you spent more than 15 minute trying to figure out?
• What is the last tool, process, or code you wrote that made you excited enough to tell somebody else?
• What was the last question you asked a more senior developer?
• What was the last question a more junior developer asked you?
• What do you wish somebody had told you a year ago?
• What was the last blog post or presentation in the community that you disagreed with?
• Do you have a hobby or interest that informs your work?
• What is the best line of code you wrote this week? How could you tell?
• What was something you did for the first time in your last project? How did it work out?
• What was something you did for the last time in your last project (or something you stopped doing for your last project) How did that work out?
• What is a tool or process you would like to learn more about?

More Help on Preparing Your Talk:

• Join #speakercorps on Slack to ask questions and get feedback from current students, alumni, and mentors on your talk
• Want to get inspired? Check out 1508 alum Emily Freeman’s talks or 1606-FE alum Madison Kerdnt’s EmberConf talk
• Other helpful resources:
  • Conference Prompts: Or How to Submit Proposal and Influence People
  • What I learned from reading 429 conference proposals
  • What Your Conference Proposal is Missing

Contact the Organizers

Reach out to the organizers to find out their upcoming schedule and pitch your talk. Utilize the same cold outreach principles discussed above.

How to Practice This

Spend 10 minutes researching meetups and topics that you’re interested in speaking on and then begin crafting an outline of a possible talk to share with your PD peer group