April 7, 2025 • 43 mins
Want to land your first (or next) speaking slot at a tech conference? Join us as Chris Woody Woodruff (Sessionize "Most active Speaker" badge for 2023 & 2024) breaks down the art of crafting talk proposals that get noticed—and accepted. From brainstorming compelling topics to writing titles and abstracts that stand out in a sea of submissions. Whether you’re a first-time speaker or looking to sharpen your proposal game, you’ll learn some practical tools to move your idea from concept to conference stage.
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Resources:
Presentation Zen book
ASP.NET Core Reimagined with htmx Book
https://woodruff.dev/
Sessionize
More about Woody
Blog
Company
Mastodon
BlueSky
Follow us on X: The Angular Plus Show
Bluesky: @theangularplusshow.bsky.social
The Angular Plus Show is a part of ng-conf. ng-conf is a multi-day Angular conference focused on delivering the highest quality training in the Angular JavaScript framework. Developers from across the globe converge every year to attend talks and workshops by the Angular team and community experts.
Join: http://www.ng-conf.org/
Attend: https://ti.to/ng-conf
Follow: https://twitter.com/ngconf
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ng-conf
https://bsky.app/profile/ng-conf.bsky.social
https://www.facebook.com/ngconfofficial
Read: https://medium.com/ngconf
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/@ngconfonline
Edited by Patrick Hayes https://www.spoonfulofmedia.com/
Stock media provided by JUQBOXMUSIC/ Pond5
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the Angular plus Show. We're app developers of
all kinds share their insights and experiences. Let's get started.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey, welcome to another episode of the Angular Plus Show.
I'm your host Q today. I'm joined by one for
sure guest our I guess co host, and then maybe
an additional additional co host if if we get Brian on,
he'll just magically appear and we'll continue on with the episode.
But Chile, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My brother?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Pretty good? Pretty good? Hi everyone? Uh man, I've been
struggling with a new kid.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Bro.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Oh man, that's I mean, it's awesome, but it also stinks.
But I mean, you're the dad, so I guess you
are getting great sleep and your wife is struggling, and
I guess that's causing you to struggle a little bit.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
I mean, yeah, it's been it's been five weeks and Mike,
Mike Tdler, my old one, starting to hit him that
he's not the only one anymore.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Oh yeah, start how old you are?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Toddler?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
He's four?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh yeah, that's that's a good separation, though they'll be
best buds in four years.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Today we are talking about conference speaking, whether that be
creating or curating a good conference speech or submitting talks
all the all the start and inflow to a good
conference speech. Our conference talk. We're joined today by Chris
(01:42):
Woody Woodruff.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
How are you today, sir, I'm good, I'm good. Thanks
for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you for joining us. This is a pretty big,
I guess conversation that we want to have. I know
that Laura was really excited to have you on to
talk about I've talked about this because we do have
a lot of people who especially the Angular community, who
want to get into the conference talks. Even I've also
wanted to get into it on and off. It's a
(02:10):
lot of work, though, and I see that you have
been doing it for a long time. Tell us a
little bit about your background, what got you into talking
in a little bit about your work history.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
So I'll have to go all the way back when
I was a toddler, like you guys were talking about toddlers.
So I actually have a speech impediment from when I
was a kid. So I didn't actually start talking until
I was three. Okay, So because of that and because
(02:45):
of my speech impediment, I was very shy growing up
and I got out of college, and I was so shy,
and just one day I was like, you know what,
I've got to get over this. I've got to get
over this, like being where I can't speak in front
(03:08):
of people. And so if you listen to me, I
take lots of breaks. I talk slowly because of that
speech impediment, because my mind right, like, my mind can
can create what I want to say, but my mouth
just doesn't get it out as fast. So I just
(03:31):
made myself kind of get up in front of people,
get over the fear. And yeah, most people are like, oh,
we never would have known. But that's really why I
did it, because I feel that as a technology person,
you know, we all have technology skills, but what separates
(03:53):
great technologists from i'll say average techechnologists and developers and
architects and infrastructure like it people is communicating. And if
you can communicate written and verbally, you separate yourself from
(04:15):
other people and so people. I just felt that if
I if I wanted to separate myself from other people
and get those jobs that are tough to get and
start working a way up the ladder, so to say,
(04:38):
like building a better and better career, you have to
get out and speak. And it doesn't mean speaking at a conference.
That really just means speaking in front of people. Like
I was definitely, like definitely afraid of even speaking in
front of like my friends, like school and like in
(05:02):
college when we would have our like our major classes. Yeah, people,
I knew. I just did not like to get up
in front of people. And I still it still is
not a one hundred percent comfortable, uh feeling, but it's
(05:23):
better than it used to be. So that's that's why.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
All right, So you said you didn't start until after school,
so that after high school, after college? Did you really college?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
About ten years after I got to college.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Wow, So I was in my thirties, Oh wow, so
way later.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah. So I was in my thirties when I when
it just hit me that that I had to get
over this if I wanted to have a career that
I really dreamt of.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So yeah, So when you did that, was it a
realization in the workplace that like, hey, I'm not speaking
up in these in these calls or in meetings, so
I'm going to start speaking more in those or was
it Hey, I'm at work and I have I want
to start speaking at conferences.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, it was. It was mostly the start. It was
mostly at work. You know, we all have great ideas,
and if you can't communicate those ideas, it's kind of
hard to get those ideas out right. I mean, it's
pretty logical. So so it started at work. I did
(06:43):
a lot consulting, so it was a lot of like
getting in the getting up in front of like clients
at client meetings and discussing plans and the project and
kind of discussing what we were going to do in
projects with clients and stuff like that. And then I
(07:07):
would go to user groups back this was back in
the nineties, late nineties, and I just saw people that
were doing talks and I thought, man, I would love
to do that. And it took a few years and
I went to a local user group and started doing
(07:29):
talks at user groups. Then I progressed up to kind
of like free one day weekend like quote unquote conferences
there are just a bunch of talks put together over
a Saturday or something. And I moved up to maybe
(07:50):
some bigger conferences, regional stuff that that people actually paid
to go and attend. And yeah, I'm today I do
a lot of talks all around the world and here
in America.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's a crazy jump from being shy in college to
world traveling.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
If I twenty years ago, if you would have said
that I would be doing this, I would have thought
that you would be crazy. But yeah, I've been. So
I've been kind of talking, doing talks and going to
conferences and user groups for I don't know, maybe fifteen
(08:33):
to seventeen years. Now.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
That's awesome. You actually you speak quite a bit, right
like you do? You do cfps and whatnot for different conferences.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Right, I do.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
But then I got rejected a lot too.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Oh love, that comes with the trust me. I get
rejected a lot. But here's what you have to remember.
They're not rejecting you. They're rejecting your talk. And so
if you can, if you can get your mind in
that and going down that kind of path, and it's
(09:12):
it's not a reflection on you. It just had Probably
is just the talk didn't match what they were doing,
or maybe lots of different people are submitting the same
topic and they it's hard to pick from. So usually
it's and as a person who's done conferences and has
(09:34):
to pick the talks, it doesn't come down to the person.
For the most part, it comes down to if the
talk fits or if it doesn't fit, and if it
if it engages a person. So, I mean, writing a
good abstract is what separates people that speak a lot
(09:58):
and people that get their talks turned down.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, let's talk about that portion. Do you use sessionize
a lot for your conferences?
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah? Most, I most conferences that I target are now
on Sessionize. It seems to have a monopoly product. But
is it seems to kind of be the place where
everyone puts their cfps. And I think there was another
(10:33):
one called paper roll or there there were some other ones,
But for the most part, you either see people use
sessionize or they kind of hand roll their own their
own submission process.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Would you say that's probably the best place for our
listeners to kind of get involved in finding good conferences
to speak at.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, yeah, I think sessionizes is probably a great place
too to put your talks up into, uh, create account,
put some put some talks in into it, and then
when you see a conference that you like to speak at,
then you can just kind of go, Okay, I'm going
(11:16):
to put two of these talks into the CFP and
see if I get selected. So, yeah, sessionizes a good
tool to uh to organize all of your your talks.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
How do you or how what what would be some
advice you would give to our listeners about how to
make a nice sessionized profile. That way, someone goes and
clicks on their on their lit on their profile and
looks at their list of talks, like what what? What
are some things that you could use to catch the
people who are I guess selecting these talks that to
(11:53):
be attracted to your profile.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Sure, sure, well have a good picture. Uh, you don't
have to pay two three hundred dollars to get a
good to get like a professional headshot. But but if
you have someone that is pretty good at photography, ask
them to do a headshot. So I think that's the
(12:19):
first thing. The second thing is have a good bio.
I know a lot of people don't like to to
write a bio because they if you're like me, I
don't like the It's it's hard for me to to
not brag, but to to say.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Uh, to give yourself props.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah, to give yourself props exactly so, but you have
to have a good bio U and put professional and
some fun personal things in there. Like like I I
put in there that that I like baseball, and I
like basketball, and I like to go to Kentucky on
(13:05):
the Bourbon Trail and and get and get bourbon bottles.
But do some fun things in there, and then give
a good outline of who you are professionally, like what
what kind of keeps your motor rolling for your career.
(13:27):
If you like front end work, if you like user experience.
I personally like mostly stuff on the back end or
API's architect software architecture databases. So just give kind of
an idea what what you like doing and what you're
(13:50):
good at. And then so that's a bio. And then
for your abstracts, abstracts are tough. Let me let me
ask you a question. How do you How do you
pick a book? So here's a question. How do you
when you're at say you're at the bookstore and you're
(14:14):
you are picking out book. I like science fiction, So
I'm going to walk up and I'm gonna just start
looking at books books. Uh, they're in that genre, that
science fiction genre. How and how do you pick a
book out? How do you find the book that you
want to read?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah? I say, oftentimes they said you can't judge a
book by its cover, but that's generally it's generally how
I picked books.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean here's the thing. I mean,
at the on the back end, the back cover of
a book, there's always blurbs that book blurbs, right, So
a book blurb, and and if you go to Amazon,
there's always a write up. Those are basically the same
(15:05):
thing as a as a conference talk. Abstract, I mean,
the name of the book is the title of your talk,
and then the blurb what they call it, the blurb
is what hooks someone in when you read that in
the back cover. You read the blurb, and it's going
(15:28):
to really tell you. It's going to tell you a
little bit about the book and about the main character,
and it's gonna give you some conflict like what the
main character is going to go through, but it doesn't
tell everything about the book. And then it's going to
try to pull you in from having a short like
(15:50):
some story, and then it's going to instill a sense
of urgency that you need to read this book. Well,
that's what you're abstract really needs to convey. Also, So
there was a book I found. This was during the
pandemic and it was a lady who wrote it, and
(16:14):
her name is I'm gonna give her credit, Julie C. Gilbert.
And she wrote a book called the Five Steps to
Better Blurbs, Crafting dynamic descriptions that sell, and it was
a book about like writing book blurbs. And I thought, oh,
(16:35):
that's interesting. So I read it and I said, this
reminds me of like writing abstracts. And I wrote a
blog post on it, and the guys have it, so
maybe they can put it out in this episode show Notes.
But it just talks about where you really have to
(16:59):
have two main things. You have to have a good
title for your talk. And it can be funny, it
can be serious, it can be whatever you want, or
it needs to be to the point or spell out
a problem that the person that should attend your talk
(17:23):
kind of pulls them in. And then the other one
is just a good abstract. It can't be too long,
it can't be too short. It needs to be kind
of like Goldilocks just right, and it needs to it
needs to convey the problem, like what is the problem
(17:45):
that you're going to be talking about, and then it's
going to talk a little bit about the solution but
not everything because you want you want that person to
not get everything out of the abstract you want to
come to your talk, but you also not have to
know who who are you targeting your abstract abstract for?
(18:07):
Is it for a developer, is it for a designer?
Is it for an architect? So there's lots of different
things that go into kind of crafting a abstract, and
I'm I am not a master of it. I think
I'm okay at it. But after you create it, have
(18:33):
people that you trust and that you feel safe to discuss, like,
ask them to read it and give you feedback.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I might have a silly question here, but do you
do you write your abstract before or after you've already
come up with your presentation material?
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Uh? Mostly before. So I sit down and I and
I really say, like, what do I want to discuss?
And uh, let's take an example, I'm trying to think
of something. So I'm trying to get more into Rust,
(19:16):
the Rust language, and so about a year ago, I said,
you know, there's there's a lot of people that that
don't know about Rust. And I'm primarily a dot net
c sharp, a sp dot net developer. I've done Angler
(19:37):
in the past and it's a I love angler, but
I said, I'm going to do a talk on uh
RUSS for for dot net and c sharp developers kind
of go through the languages, compare the languages between c
sharp and and rust and try to try to shared
(20:00):
those and it's been a pretty popular talk. But I
created the abstract first, and then I did the UH.
I kind of did the slide deck and the flow
of the talk that mostly comes about because I kind
(20:21):
of write the abstract and that gives me some idea
about what the talk should be about.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And then the other thing I guess I would ask
is do you ever create just your slides beforehand or
is it like I'm gonna have like a general outline
of what the slots are gonna look like. I might
post those on can you post those on sessions? I
think you can post the link to it on session.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah. Yeah. So so there's lots of there's a lot
of good books out that you can read, like Presentations
in is a good book. But what I've learned you
need to have EBB and flows, So you need to
say there's something that I want to talk about, like
(21:09):
talk about the problem and talk about the solution and
talk about the outcome. Now you might have multiple of
those of those cycles in your talk, or you might
have one, depends on what. But that's really how how
you should. I always create outline for my for my
(21:30):
talk that I that I really want to talk about
the problem, the solution, and then the outcome and then
there if there's anything else I want to also talk about,
if there's other problems and solutions and outcomes. But really
that is what, Uh, that's really what you want your
(21:52):
talk to be about. You want to talk about a problem,
you want to talk about the solution, and you want
to talk about the outcome that that uh, the person
who's sitting in your in your talk should get from
whatever solution you're talking about. Cool.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So do you generally just find things that you are
interested in or that you are I guess newly infatuated with,
or do you ever try to curate your talks to
be based on a particular crowd Like you see that
someone has a problem online, You're like, I want to
make a presentation about that.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Sure, Well it's probably a mix of both. So, uh,
you have to have a passion for what you're talking about.
I mean, if you're just if you're talking about something
that you are interested in, people are going to pick
up on that h in your that are attending your talk.
(22:50):
So it has to be it has to be something
that you're interested in. And I'm I'm not saying you
have to know very much about it, but you you
need to be interested in. And then you you also
need to pick something that you think people are going
to be interested in, because trust me, I've created talks
and I've submitted that never get picked. And yeah, I
(23:16):
mean it's disheartening because you're like, oh, it would be
great if if I could, if I could talk on X,
y Z. But you so you have to find those niches.
And I always say find your niche also because if
(23:37):
you're going to come in and talk about the same
thing that everyone else in the speaker community is talking about, you,
you're not going to get picked either, because you're going
to be You're going to be one of a dozen
or two dozen people submitting to a conference on the
same subject. And unless you're at abstract is really engaging,
(24:05):
you're you're probably not going to be picked. So find
find something you're passionate about, find something that the community, whatever,
your community that you're speaking to needs and find that niche. Uh,
find that niche that that someone can say like, hey,
(24:27):
Q is the person that knows x, y Z about
JavaScript and type script and maybe it's maybe it's UH
doing some something that that no one else does. But
you need to find that kind of that niche for yourself.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
That's kind of that's actually kind of my problem because
I wanted to get back to that that light rejection discussion.
Why I said that, Oh I submitted talk, but it
get rejected, and and then now we're mentioning about like
fighting your niche. The thing is my my passion is
too niche.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Oh okay, yeah, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Like my my focus is.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Very niche.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
It's solved a very specific problem, and I'm very passionate
about it. I want to talk about it and want
to share with people. But then because it is too niche,
it's hard for me to get picked because well, let's
say that, so now Angler with the new API is coming,
with all of these changes coming, people submitting talks about
all of these changes, yep, And then I submit this
(25:40):
kind of a niche topic. I'm not going to compete
with be able to compete with the other people.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, well maybe you can find that that thing you're
passionate about and expand, like go up, maybe go up
a level or two and see where it fits into.
Like I've a good friend that has been talking of
a lot about accessibility. It's a really important topic, but
(26:10):
like ten years ago, there wasn't really I mean, he
wasn't getting picked a lot because it wasn't a big topic. Yeah,
So one is, don't don't get discouraged, but find find
a way for your really niche subject to maybe expand
(26:36):
out and say where does this where does my passion
fit into And then and then say, well, you know,
if it's accessibility and no one's picking your talk, then
you got to jump up and go, well maybe I
can talk a little bit more about like user experience
(26:57):
and have accessibility as part of that user experience. So
that's why I always tell people, uh, but but keep
those those talks that you're you have a real passion
for around. Like as an example, tomorrow morning, I'm doing
a talk over in Detroit and this this talk really
(27:22):
hasn't never got picked very much until AI exploded. And
this talk isn't about generative AI. It has to do
with a different area of artificial intelligence called genetic algorithms.
(27:43):
I don't know if you guys have ever heard of
genetic algorithms, but it's trying to solve a problem using
by it to using biology. So it was a it
was a senior project when I went to school. So
I was in computer science in college and that was
(28:04):
our senior project. We had to to create a distributed
system to use GA's genetic algorithms to solve a problem,
but we had to kind of disperse them. This was
(28:25):
Solarish Unix system back in the day, and you could
spawn off from a machine. You could say, okay, now
run this thread or run this program over in another
machine and you could still talk. And it was really
kind of an interesting, interesting system. But a couple of
(28:50):
years ago, like four years ago, I created a talk
on genetic algorithms and never got picked, never got pick,
never got picked, And I when when the whole chat
GPT exploded, I changed the talk to say, hey, this
(29:12):
is another another version of AI, and it's genetic algorithms,
and it's gotten picked a couple a few times. Uh,
And it's a fun talk. Think of Think of like
a problem a use case for genetic algorithms is you've
ever heard of the traveling sales person problem? Have you
(29:38):
heard that?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Sounds familiar? Tell it to us.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah. So, so a salesperson has one hundred, one hundred
cities or towns that they have to travel to, and
you have to find the shortest path for that salesperson
to travel to to go to every single point. But
(30:01):
what is the shortest length of the path. And that's
really tough, especially if you get up to like millions
of points and and many points where brute force isn't
gonna be good enough. So and and I do a
(30:23):
talk around that, and it's a fun talk. I love
doing it. And it doesn't usually get a ton of people.
I don't get I might get a couple dozen people
coming to talk like that. But but that was a
talk that I kept in my tool box or tool belt,
(30:44):
and I just kept sticking with it until it was
in an area that was interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
How often do you let a let a talk continue
fill before you're like, I'm gonna I guess like that,
But you just keep it. You just keep it in
a sessionized for years and kind of make a little
small edits until it picks up, or you just say, yeah,
screw it, I'm gonna just drop it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Sometimes I rewrite them. Sometimes I retire stuff, even pop
like talks that I like to do. They just have
our outdated or I just don't have the passion for anymore.
I'll retire things, or I'll read tool them to be
something slightly different, to upgrade them based on maybe some
(31:36):
new technology or new features of a of a computer
language that could kind of improve the talk and improve
the solution that the talk was trying to convey.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I see, okay, yeah, because I I don't use my
sessionize anymore. It was just so it was so much
work to keep up with, and like I wasn't getting
picked for anything big. So I did a lot of
local things and even then it was like small, like
maybe a couple dozen people would show up. It was
always Cypress based unit testing, component testing, but I could
(32:15):
never get into a bigger crowd. I even did some
talks online on like the Angular meetups and stuff, but
it was never a big never a bit con. I
think I tried in g Confident it was like two
years in a row to get picked. So I guess
I'm done trying to speak, So I don't know how
you get over the hump of man. I've been rejected
too many times. So do I even continue to try
(32:38):
for that or do I?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Well, it's tough nowadays. Like fifteen years ago, there weren't
very many people that were i'll say, in the speaker community.
And it's it got really tough. It's starting to get
better now because most of the time I'm older, so
(33:01):
I don't know how old you guys are. I have
grown kids, so I've got two in college and one
that's out of college and on his own. But I'm
just seeing that lots of younger people in our industry
aren't submitting for talks. They're doing everything online. So they're
(33:26):
doing the people that probably fifteen years ago would be
going to conferences and doing talks are more probably doing
YouTube videos or doing TikTok or doing video format or
audio format like podcasting. So and that's a great vehicle also,
(33:55):
and that can be fulfilling, and that can really do
great things for your career also. But it's I always say,
go out and try to speak in front of a
hundred people. It is the scariest thing, but it is very,
(34:18):
very fulfilling. When you do a good talk and people
come up afterwards and ask questions and stuff like that.
But if you really want to do it, just keep
doing small, like do whatever you can do. It's kind
(34:39):
of like a comedian. I've got a buddy who's a comedian,
and like he bombs every once in a while. Every
time he gets up on stag isn't great and sometimes
he can go sometime before he gets booked for gigs
(35:03):
and stuff like that. So uh, but just just stick
with it. If you really want to do it, stick
with it and ask people. Don't do it by yourself.
Ask people for help. Ask like, get to know the
people that run the conferences that you want to speak
(35:25):
at and say, hey, like there's a CFP coming up,
are there any topics that that people aren't submitting to
that you guys would like to like to see. Not
that and don't do it just to just to speak
and say, oh, I'll take that topic. But see if
(35:46):
there's some some topic that they they're not seeing and
see if it matches up with some of your passions
and your and your skills. And that can also be
a great way to h to uh uh kind of
get picked. So it's it's really networking and like getting
(36:08):
to know people and seeing what's out there and finding
finding uh, things that are nicheer, but there's also things
that are bigger, like you can just talk about like
I do talks on HTTP and like rest. Like I
(36:32):
always tell people I love HTTP and people look at
me like I'm strange. But to be honest, I mean
I love the protocol. It is so interesting. And then
REST on top of that gives it a different angle.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
So, uh, do you hate graph qilmen?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
No? No, I just love what what HTGP gives you, right,
it gives you the foundation to build distributed applications in anything.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
The listeners didn't get to see your face when you
started that answer.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Oh, I love h I do a talk and that
was a very niche thing. Niche talk I was doing
six seven, eight years ago and I still do it
every once in a while. And yeah, people, I'm just
a big geek.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
So I don't think I've heard anyone ever say like
they love HTTP before. Yeah, I've heard the base between
like graph QL versus RES, you know, like I like
ress more, you know, but it's never like I mean
I love AHTTP.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
It's like I like rest I like RESTful. I mean
I always but I have read the entire HTTP protocol
spec put me to sleep a couple of times, but
I did. Uh, it's it's it's not the easiest thing
to get through. But but uh, but yeah, but that
(38:22):
that tell that is a little a little bit about
my philosophy and on getting into speaking and and I'll
help people every once in a while too, like mentor
and try to try to give them ideas and work
on abstracts with them and stuff like that. I try
to pay it forward because I had a lot of
(38:43):
people that, uh that helped me out when I was younger.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Awesome. If anybody wanted to get in touch with you
for a help on this, for mentoring, how can they
reach out to you?
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Uh, well, I'm you can go out to my my
website Woodroof dot dev. Uh there's some contact information in there.
I'm on blue sky Underwoodrift, dot dev. I'm on Macedon,
I'm in LinkedIn. You can look me up Chris Woody Woodroof.
(39:22):
Most of the time my dms are open, I think
all my dms are open and all on all the platforms.
So so yeah, if people want to just ask me questions.
I'll find time for anyone. So that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I might even have to reach out to you myself.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, cue, I'll help you out. Well, we'll get you talking. Okay,
let's go.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
And it is coming coming soon? Have have we announced
that yet? I don't know if that's been a fit
official new ship.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
It is, it is, it is officials they coming.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Okay, but but but they don't are that the location
and date has not We don't know.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
Yeah, it's not official yet.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I mean we know. Ah, all right, do you have
any do you have anything you want to push out today?
Speaker 3 (40:25):
No? No, I mean if anyone needs help, they can
reach out talk to me. I mean, I I just
am here to help. I mean I've I've reached a
point where where, uh I pretty much have done everything
wrong that you can do, so so uh I've learned
(40:49):
lessons from from everything, so and I like to share them.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Cool.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
I might reach out to you about it to be
control cash control header I love, but if I hate
cash control headers.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Oh well, yeap, yelp just reminds me to this day. Yep. There,
Well that's yeah, that's response cashing. So yeah, yeah, it's
it's an interesting. I do a talk on cashing, just
cashing for for like a p I S and response
(41:26):
cashing where you set your your cash header is one
of the things I talk about.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So I'm gonna I'm gonna also put your session eyes
in here as well so the viewers can look it up.
I just want people to see, like your your list
of talks, like your your abstracts are all really nicely done.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Yeah, I was, I was. I was looking at that.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I was like, Wow, this is a lot of material.
It looks professional like, it looks it's opposed to I know,
but like, yeah, it's just it's that took a long time.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
It took a long time to learn. So but but yeah,
I mean, if someone just emails me or just wants
me to look at abstracts or help them build an abstract,
I'll help.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
All right, guys.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
But that's about it.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
So yeah, all right, Well we'll let you get out
of here, and guys, thank you for joining us on
another episode. I'll hope to see you guys next week.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
Hey, this is Preston. I'm one of the NGI Champions writers.
In our daily battle to crush out code, we run
into problems and sometimes those problems aren't easily solved. Ng
COMF broadcasts articles and tutorials from angie champions like myself
that help make other developers' lives just a little bit easier.
To access these articles, visit medium dot com, forward slash, ngcomp.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Thank you for listening to the Angular Plus Show, an
NGICOMF podcast. We'd like to think our sponsors the NGCOMF
organizers Joe Eames and Aaron Frost, our producer Gene Bourne,
and our podcast editor and engineer Patrick Kyes. You can
find him at spoonful ofmedia dot com.
Welcome to the Angular plus Show. We're app developers of
all kinds share their insights and experiences. Let's get started.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey, welcome to another episode of the Angular Plus Show.
I'm your host Q today. I'm joined by one for
sure guest our I guess co host, and then maybe
an additional additional co host if if we get Brian on,
he'll just magically appear and we'll continue on with the episode.
But Chile, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My brother?
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Pretty good? Pretty good? Hi everyone? Uh man, I've been
struggling with a new kid.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Bro.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Oh man, that's I mean, it's awesome, but it also stinks.
But I mean, you're the dad, so I guess you
are getting great sleep and your wife is struggling, and
I guess that's causing you to struggle a little bit.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
I mean, yeah, it's been it's been five weeks and Mike,
Mike Tdler, my old one, starting to hit him that
he's not the only one anymore.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Oh yeah, start how old you are?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Toddler?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
He's four?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh yeah, that's that's a good separation, though they'll be
best buds in four years.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Today we are talking about conference speaking, whether that be
creating or curating a good conference speech or submitting talks
all the all the start and inflow to a good
conference speech. Our conference talk. We're joined today by Chris
(01:42):
Woody Woodruff.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
How are you today, sir, I'm good, I'm good. Thanks
for having me on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Thank you for joining us. This is a pretty big,
I guess conversation that we want to have. I know
that Laura was really excited to have you on to
talk about I've talked about this because we do have
a lot of people who especially the Angular community, who
want to get into the conference talks. Even I've also
wanted to get into it on and off. It's a
(02:10):
lot of work, though, and I see that you have
been doing it for a long time. Tell us a
little bit about your background, what got you into talking
in a little bit about your work history.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
So I'll have to go all the way back when
I was a toddler, like you guys were talking about toddlers.
So I actually have a speech impediment from when I
was a kid. So I didn't actually start talking until
I was three. Okay, So because of that and because
(02:45):
of my speech impediment, I was very shy growing up
and I got out of college, and I was so shy,
and just one day I was like, you know what,
I've got to get over this. I've got to get
over this, like being where I can't speak in front
(03:08):
of people. And so if you listen to me, I
take lots of breaks. I talk slowly because of that
speech impediment, because my mind right, like, my mind can
can create what I want to say, but my mouth
just doesn't get it out as fast. So I just
(03:31):
made myself kind of get up in front of people,
get over the fear. And yeah, most people are like, oh,
we never would have known. But that's really why I
did it, because I feel that as a technology person,
you know, we all have technology skills, but what separates
(03:53):
great technologists from i'll say average techechnologists and developers and
architects and infrastructure like it people is communicating. And if
you can communicate written and verbally, you separate yourself from
(04:15):
other people and so people. I just felt that if
I if I wanted to separate myself from other people
and get those jobs that are tough to get and
start working a way up the ladder, so to say,
(04:38):
like building a better and better career, you have to
get out and speak. And it doesn't mean speaking at a conference.
That really just means speaking in front of people. Like
I was definitely, like definitely afraid of even speaking in
front of like my friends, like school and like in
(05:02):
college when we would have our like our major classes. Yeah, people,
I knew. I just did not like to get up
in front of people. And I still it still is
not a one hundred percent comfortable, uh feeling, but it's
(05:23):
better than it used to be. So that's that's why.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
All right, So you said you didn't start until after school,
so that after high school, after college? Did you really college?
Speaker 3 (05:38):
About ten years after I got to college.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Wow, So I was in my thirties, Oh wow, so
way later.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah. So I was in my thirties when I when
it just hit me that that I had to get
over this if I wanted to have a career that
I really dreamt of.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So yeah, So when you did that, was it a
realization in the workplace that like, hey, I'm not speaking
up in these in these calls or in meetings, so
I'm going to start speaking more in those or was
it Hey, I'm at work and I have I want
to start speaking at conferences.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, it was. It was mostly the start. It was
mostly at work. You know, we all have great ideas,
and if you can't communicate those ideas, it's kind of
hard to get those ideas out right. I mean, it's
pretty logical. So so it started at work. I did
(06:43):
a lot consulting, so it was a lot of like
getting in the getting up in front of like clients
at client meetings and discussing plans and the project and
kind of discussing what we were going to do in
projects with clients and stuff like that. And then I
(07:07):
would go to user groups back this was back in
the nineties, late nineties, and I just saw people that
were doing talks and I thought, man, I would love
to do that. And it took a few years and
I went to a local user group and started doing
(07:29):
talks at user groups. Then I progressed up to kind
of like free one day weekend like quote unquote conferences
there are just a bunch of talks put together over
a Saturday or something. And I moved up to maybe
(07:50):
some bigger conferences, regional stuff that that people actually paid
to go and attend. And yeah, I'm today I do
a lot of talks all around the world and here
in America.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's a crazy jump from being shy in college to
world traveling.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
If I twenty years ago, if you would have said
that I would be doing this, I would have thought
that you would be crazy. But yeah, I've been. So
I've been kind of talking, doing talks and going to
conferences and user groups for I don't know, maybe fifteen
(08:33):
to seventeen years. Now.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
That's awesome. You actually you speak quite a bit, right
like you do? You do cfps and whatnot for different conferences.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Right, I do.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
But then I got rejected a lot too.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Oh love, that comes with the trust me. I get
rejected a lot. But here's what you have to remember.
They're not rejecting you. They're rejecting your talk. And so
if you can, if you can get your mind in
that and going down that kind of path, and it's
(09:12):
it's not a reflection on you. It just had Probably
is just the talk didn't match what they were doing,
or maybe lots of different people are submitting the same
topic and they it's hard to pick from. So usually
it's and as a person who's done conferences and has
(09:34):
to pick the talks, it doesn't come down to the person.
For the most part, it comes down to if the
talk fits or if it doesn't fit, and if it
if it engages a person. So, I mean, writing a
good abstract is what separates people that speak a lot
(09:58):
and people that get their talks turned down.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, let's talk about that portion. Do you use sessionize
a lot for your conferences?
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yeah? Most, I most conferences that I target are now
on Sessionize. It seems to have a monopoly product. But
is it seems to kind of be the place where
everyone puts their cfps. And I think there was another
(10:33):
one called paper roll or there there were some other ones,
But for the most part, you either see people use
sessionize or they kind of hand roll their own their
own submission process.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Would you say that's probably the best place for our
listeners to kind of get involved in finding good conferences
to speak at.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, yeah, I think sessionizes is probably a great place
too to put your talks up into, uh, create account,
put some put some talks in into it, and then
when you see a conference that you like to speak at,
then you can just kind of go, Okay, I'm going
(11:16):
to put two of these talks into the CFP and
see if I get selected. So, yeah, sessionizes a good
tool to uh to organize all of your your talks.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
How do you or how what what would be some
advice you would give to our listeners about how to
make a nice sessionized profile. That way, someone goes and
clicks on their on their lit on their profile and
looks at their list of talks, like what what? What
are some things that you could use to catch the
people who are I guess selecting these talks that to
(11:53):
be attracted to your profile.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Sure, sure, well have a good picture. Uh, you don't
have to pay two three hundred dollars to get a
good to get like a professional headshot. But but if
you have someone that is pretty good at photography, ask
them to do a headshot. So I think that's the
(12:19):
first thing. The second thing is have a good bio.
I know a lot of people don't like to to
write a bio because they if you're like me, I
don't like the It's it's hard for me to to
not brag, but to to say.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Uh, to give yourself props.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah, to give yourself props exactly so, but you have
to have a good bio U and put professional and
some fun personal things in there. Like like I I
put in there that that I like baseball, and I
like basketball, and I like to go to Kentucky on
(13:05):
the Bourbon Trail and and get and get bourbon bottles.
But do some fun things in there, and then give
a good outline of who you are professionally, like what
what kind of keeps your motor rolling for your career.
(13:27):
If you like front end work, if you like user experience.
I personally like mostly stuff on the back end or
API's architect software architecture databases. So just give kind of
an idea what what you like doing and what you're
(13:50):
good at. And then so that's a bio. And then
for your abstracts, abstracts are tough. Let me let me
ask you a question. How do you How do you
pick a book? So here's a question. How do you
when you're at say you're at the bookstore and you're
(14:14):
you are picking out book. I like science fiction, So
I'm going to walk up and I'm gonna just start
looking at books books. Uh, they're in that genre, that
science fiction genre. How and how do you pick a
book out? How do you find the book that you
want to read?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah? I say, oftentimes they said you can't judge a
book by its cover, but that's generally it's generally how
I picked books.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, yeah, Well, I mean here's the thing. I mean,
at the on the back end, the back cover of
a book, there's always blurbs that book blurbs, right, So
a book blurb, and and if you go to Amazon,
there's always a write up. Those are basically the same
(15:05):
thing as a as a conference talk. Abstract, I mean,
the name of the book is the title of your talk,
and then the blurb what they call it, the blurb
is what hooks someone in when you read that in
the back cover. You read the blurb, and it's going
(15:28):
to really tell you. It's going to tell you a
little bit about the book and about the main character,
and it's gonna give you some conflict like what the
main character is going to go through, but it doesn't
tell everything about the book. And then it's going to
try to pull you in from having a short like
(15:50):
some story, and then it's going to instill a sense
of urgency that you need to read this book. Well,
that's what you're abstract really needs to convey. Also, So
there was a book I found. This was during the
pandemic and it was a lady who wrote it, and
(16:14):
her name is I'm gonna give her credit, Julie C. Gilbert.
And she wrote a book called the Five Steps to
Better Blurbs, Crafting dynamic descriptions that sell, and it was
a book about like writing book blurbs. And I thought, oh,
(16:35):
that's interesting. So I read it and I said, this
reminds me of like writing abstracts. And I wrote a
blog post on it, and the guys have it, so
maybe they can put it out in this episode show Notes.
But it just talks about where you really have to
(16:59):
have two main things. You have to have a good
title for your talk. And it can be funny, it
can be serious, it can be whatever you want, or
it needs to be to the point or spell out
a problem that the person that should attend your talk
(17:23):
kind of pulls them in. And then the other one
is just a good abstract. It can't be too long,
it can't be too short. It needs to be kind
of like Goldilocks just right, and it needs to it
needs to convey the problem, like what is the problem
(17:45):
that you're going to be talking about, and then it's
going to talk a little bit about the solution but
not everything because you want you want that person to
not get everything out of the abstract you want to
come to your talk, but you also not have to
know who who are you targeting your abstract abstract for?
(18:07):
Is it for a developer, is it for a designer?
Is it for an architect? So there's lots of different
things that go into kind of crafting a abstract, and
I'm I am not a master of it. I think
I'm okay at it. But after you create it, have
(18:33):
people that you trust and that you feel safe to discuss, like,
ask them to read it and give you feedback.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
I might have a silly question here, but do you
do you write your abstract before or after you've already
come up with your presentation material?
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Uh? Mostly before. So I sit down and I and
I really say, like, what do I want to discuss?
And uh, let's take an example, I'm trying to think
of something. So I'm trying to get more into Rust,
(19:16):
the Rust language, and so about a year ago, I said,
you know, there's there's a lot of people that that
don't know about Rust. And I'm primarily a dot net
c sharp, a sp dot net developer. I've done Angler
(19:37):
in the past and it's a I love angler, but
I said, I'm going to do a talk on uh
RUSS for for dot net and c sharp developers kind
of go through the languages, compare the languages between c
sharp and and rust and try to try to shared
(20:00):
those and it's been a pretty popular talk. But I
created the abstract first, and then I did the UH.
I kind of did the slide deck and the flow
of the talk that mostly comes about because I kind
(20:21):
of write the abstract and that gives me some idea
about what the talk should be about.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And then the other thing I guess I would ask
is do you ever create just your slides beforehand or
is it like I'm gonna have like a general outline
of what the slots are gonna look like. I might
post those on can you post those on sessions? I
think you can post the link to it on session.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah. Yeah. So so there's lots of there's a lot
of good books out that you can read, like Presentations
in is a good book. But what I've learned you
need to have EBB and flows, So you need to
say there's something that I want to talk about, like
(21:09):
talk about the problem and talk about the solution and
talk about the outcome. Now you might have multiple of
those of those cycles in your talk, or you might
have one, depends on what. But that's really how how
you should. I always create outline for my for my
(21:30):
talk that I that I really want to talk about
the problem, the solution, and then the outcome and then
there if there's anything else I want to also talk about,
if there's other problems and solutions and outcomes. But really
that is what, Uh, that's really what you want your
(21:52):
talk to be about. You want to talk about a problem,
you want to talk about the solution, and you want
to talk about the outcome that that uh, the person
who's sitting in your in your talk should get from
whatever solution you're talking about. Cool.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So do you generally just find things that you are
interested in or that you are I guess newly infatuated with,
or do you ever try to curate your talks to
be based on a particular crowd Like you see that
someone has a problem online, You're like, I want to
make a presentation about that.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Sure, Well it's probably a mix of both. So, uh,
you have to have a passion for what you're talking about.
I mean, if you're just if you're talking about something
that you are interested in, people are going to pick
up on that h in your that are attending your talk.
(22:50):
So it has to be it has to be something
that you're interested in. And I'm I'm not saying you
have to know very much about it, but you you
need to be interested in. And then you you also
need to pick something that you think people are going
to be interested in, because trust me, I've created talks
and I've submitted that never get picked. And yeah, I
(23:16):
mean it's disheartening because you're like, oh, it would be
great if if I could, if I could talk on X,
y Z. But you so you have to find those niches.
And I always say find your niche also because if
(23:37):
you're going to come in and talk about the same
thing that everyone else in the speaker community is talking about, you,
you're not going to get picked either, because you're going
to be You're going to be one of a dozen
or two dozen people submitting to a conference on the
same subject. And unless you're at abstract is really engaging,
(24:05):
you're you're probably not going to be picked. So find
find something you're passionate about, find something that the community, whatever,
your community that you're speaking to needs and find that niche. Uh,
find that niche that that someone can say like, hey,
(24:27):
Q is the person that knows x, y Z about
JavaScript and type script and maybe it's maybe it's UH
doing some something that that no one else does. But
you need to find that kind of that niche for yourself.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
That's kind of that's actually kind of my problem because
I wanted to get back to that that light rejection discussion.
Why I said that, Oh I submitted talk, but it
get rejected, and and then now we're mentioning about like
fighting your niche. The thing is my my passion is
too niche.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Oh okay, yeah, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Like my my focus is.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Very niche.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
It's solved a very specific problem, and I'm very passionate
about it. I want to talk about it and want
to share with people. But then because it is too niche,
it's hard for me to get picked because well, let's
say that, so now Angler with the new API is coming,
with all of these changes coming, people submitting talks about
all of these changes, yep, And then I submit this
(25:40):
kind of a niche topic. I'm not going to compete
with be able to compete with the other people.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, well maybe you can find that that thing you're
passionate about and expand, like go up, maybe go up
a level or two and see where it fits into.
Like I've a good friend that has been talking of
a lot about accessibility. It's a really important topic, but
(26:10):
like ten years ago, there wasn't really I mean, he
wasn't getting picked a lot because it wasn't a big topic. Yeah,
So one is, don't don't get discouraged, but find find
a way for your really niche subject to maybe expand
(26:36):
out and say where does this where does my passion
fit into And then and then say, well, you know,
if it's accessibility and no one's picking your talk, then
you got to jump up and go, well maybe I
can talk a little bit more about like user experience
(26:57):
and have accessibility as part of that user experience. So
that's why I always tell people, uh, but but keep
those those talks that you're you have a real passion
for around. Like as an example, tomorrow morning, I'm doing
a talk over in Detroit and this this talk really
(27:22):
hasn't never got picked very much until AI exploded. And
this talk isn't about generative AI. It has to do
with a different area of artificial intelligence called genetic algorithms.
(27:43):
I don't know if you guys have ever heard of
genetic algorithms, but it's trying to solve a problem using
by it to using biology. So it was a it
was a senior project when I went to school. So
I was in computer science in college and that was
(28:04):
our senior project. We had to to create a distributed
system to use GA's genetic algorithms to solve a problem,
but we had to kind of disperse them. This was
(28:25):
Solarish Unix system back in the day, and you could
spawn off from a machine. You could say, okay, now
run this thread or run this program over in another
machine and you could still talk. And it was really
kind of an interesting, interesting system. But a couple of
(28:50):
years ago, like four years ago, I created a talk
on genetic algorithms and never got picked, never got pick,
never got picked, And I when when the whole chat
GPT exploded, I changed the talk to say, hey, this
(29:12):
is another another version of AI, and it's genetic algorithms,
and it's gotten picked a couple a few times. Uh,
And it's a fun talk. Think of Think of like
a problem a use case for genetic algorithms is you've
ever heard of the traveling sales person problem? Have you
(29:38):
heard that?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Sounds familiar? Tell it to us.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah. So, so a salesperson has one hundred, one hundred
cities or towns that they have to travel to, and
you have to find the shortest path for that salesperson
to travel to to go to every single point. But
(30:01):
what is the shortest length of the path. And that's
really tough, especially if you get up to like millions
of points and and many points where brute force isn't
gonna be good enough. So and and I do a
(30:23):
talk around that, and it's a fun talk. I love
doing it. And it doesn't usually get a ton of people.
I don't get I might get a couple dozen people
coming to talk like that. But but that was a
talk that I kept in my tool box or tool belt,
(30:44):
and I just kept sticking with it until it was
in an area that was interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
How often do you let a let a talk continue
fill before you're like, I'm gonna I guess like that,
But you just keep it. You just keep it in
a sessionized for years and kind of make a little
small edits until it picks up, or you just say, yeah,
screw it, I'm gonna just drop it.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Sometimes I rewrite them. Sometimes I retire stuff, even pop
like talks that I like to do. They just have
our outdated or I just don't have the passion for anymore.
I'll retire things, or I'll read tool them to be
something slightly different, to upgrade them based on maybe some
(31:36):
new technology or new features of a of a computer
language that could kind of improve the talk and improve
the solution that the talk was trying to convey.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I see, okay, yeah, because I I don't use my
sessionize anymore. It was just so it was so much
work to keep up with, and like I wasn't getting
picked for anything big. So I did a lot of
local things and even then it was like small, like
maybe a couple dozen people would show up. It was
always Cypress based unit testing, component testing, but I could
(32:15):
never get into a bigger crowd. I even did some
talks online on like the Angular meetups and stuff, but
it was never a big never a bit con. I
think I tried in g Confident it was like two
years in a row to get picked. So I guess
I'm done trying to speak, So I don't know how
you get over the hump of man. I've been rejected
too many times. So do I even continue to try
(32:38):
for that or do I?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Well, it's tough nowadays. Like fifteen years ago, there weren't
very many people that were i'll say, in the speaker community.
And it's it got really tough. It's starting to get
better now because most of the time I'm older, so
(33:01):
I don't know how old you guys are. I have
grown kids, so I've got two in college and one
that's out of college and on his own. But I'm
just seeing that lots of younger people in our industry
aren't submitting for talks. They're doing everything online. So they're
(33:26):
doing the people that probably fifteen years ago would be
going to conferences and doing talks are more probably doing
YouTube videos or doing TikTok or doing video format or
audio format like podcasting. So and that's a great vehicle also,
(33:55):
and that can be fulfilling, and that can really do
great things for your career also. But it's I always say,
go out and try to speak in front of a
hundred people. It is the scariest thing, but it is very,
(34:18):
very fulfilling. When you do a good talk and people
come up afterwards and ask questions and stuff like that.
But if you really want to do it, just keep
doing small, like do whatever you can do. It's kind
(34:39):
of like a comedian. I've got a buddy who's a comedian,
and like he bombs every once in a while. Every
time he gets up on stag isn't great and sometimes
he can go sometime before he gets booked for gigs
(35:03):
and stuff like that. So uh, but just just stick
with it. If you really want to do it, stick
with it and ask people. Don't do it by yourself.
Ask people for help. Ask like, get to know the
people that run the conferences that you want to speak
(35:25):
at and say, hey, like there's a CFP coming up,
are there any topics that that people aren't submitting to
that you guys would like to like to see. Not
that and don't do it just to just to speak
and say, oh, I'll take that topic. But see if
(35:46):
there's some some topic that they they're not seeing and
see if it matches up with some of your passions
and your and your skills. And that can also be
a great way to h to uh uh kind of
get picked. So it's it's really networking and like getting
(36:08):
to know people and seeing what's out there and finding
finding uh, things that are nicheer, but there's also things
that are bigger, like you can just talk about like
I do talks on HTTP and like rest. Like I
(36:32):
always tell people I love HTTP and people look at
me like I'm strange. But to be honest, I mean
I love the protocol. It is so interesting. And then
REST on top of that gives it a different angle.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
So, uh, do you hate graph qilmen?
Speaker 3 (37:00):
No? No, I just love what what HTGP gives you, right,
it gives you the foundation to build distributed applications in anything.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
The listeners didn't get to see your face when you
started that answer.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Oh, I love h I do a talk and that
was a very niche thing. Niche talk I was doing
six seven, eight years ago and I still do it
every once in a while. And yeah, people, I'm just
a big geek.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
So I don't think I've heard anyone ever say like
they love HTTP before. Yeah, I've heard the base between
like graph QL versus RES, you know, like I like
ress more, you know, but it's never like I mean
I love AHTTP.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
It's like I like rest I like RESTful. I mean
I always but I have read the entire HTTP protocol
spec put me to sleep a couple of times, but
I did. Uh, it's it's it's not the easiest thing
to get through. But but uh, but yeah, but that
(38:22):
that tell that is a little a little bit about
my philosophy and on getting into speaking and and I'll
help people every once in a while too, like mentor
and try to try to give them ideas and work
on abstracts with them and stuff like that. I try
to pay it forward because I had a lot of
(38:43):
people that, uh that helped me out when I was younger.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Awesome. If anybody wanted to get in touch with you
for a help on this, for mentoring, how can they
reach out to you?
Speaker 3 (38:56):
Uh, well, I'm you can go out to my my
website Woodroof dot dev. Uh there's some contact information in there.
I'm on blue sky Underwoodrift, dot dev. I'm on Macedon,
I'm in LinkedIn. You can look me up Chris Woody Woodroof.
(39:22):
Most of the time my dms are open, I think
all my dms are open and all on all the platforms.
So so yeah, if people want to just ask me questions.
I'll find time for anyone. So that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
I might even have to reach out to you myself.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, cue, I'll help you out. Well, we'll get you talking. Okay,
let's go.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
And it is coming coming soon? Have have we announced
that yet? I don't know if that's been a fit
official new ship.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
It is, it is, it is officials they coming.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Okay, but but but they don't are that the location
and date has not We don't know.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
Yeah, it's not official yet.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
I mean we know. Ah, all right, do you have
any do you have anything you want to push out today?
Speaker 3 (40:25):
No? No, I mean if anyone needs help, they can
reach out talk to me. I mean, I I just
am here to help. I mean I've I've reached a
point where where, uh I pretty much have done everything
wrong that you can do, so so uh I've learned
(40:49):
lessons from from everything, so and I like to share them.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Cool.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
I might reach out to you about it to be
control cash control header I love, but if I hate
cash control headers.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
Oh well, yeap, yelp just reminds me to this day. Yep. There,
Well that's yeah, that's response cashing. So yeah, yeah, it's
it's an interesting. I do a talk on cashing, just
cashing for for like a p I S and response
(41:26):
cashing where you set your your cash header is one
of the things I talk about.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So I'm gonna I'm gonna also put your session eyes
in here as well so the viewers can look it up.
I just want people to see, like your your list
of talks, like your your abstracts are all really nicely done.
Speaker 4 (41:53):
Yeah, I was, I was. I was looking at that.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I was like, Wow, this is a lot of material.
It looks professional like, it looks it's opposed to I know,
but like, yeah, it's just it's that took a long time.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
It took a long time to learn. So but but yeah,
I mean, if someone just emails me or just wants
me to look at abstracts or help them build an abstract,
I'll help.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
All right, guys.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
But that's about it.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
So yeah, all right, Well we'll let you get out
of here, and guys, thank you for joining us on
another episode. I'll hope to see you guys next week.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
Hey, this is Preston. I'm one of the NGI Champions writers.
In our daily battle to crush out code, we run
into problems and sometimes those problems aren't easily solved. Ng
COMF broadcasts articles and tutorials from angie champions like myself
that help make other developers' lives just a little bit easier.
To access these articles, visit medium dot com, forward slash, ngcomp.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Thank you for listening to the Angular Plus Show, an
NGICOMF podcast. We'd like to think our sponsors the NGCOMF
organizers Joe Eames and Aaron Frost, our producer Gene Bourne,
and our podcast editor and engineer Patrick Kyes. You can
find him at spoonful ofmedia dot com.
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