Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Callender Hogan

Lara’s superb book on public speaking is now available in its entirity for free as a web book!

And a very beautiful web book it is too! All it needs is a service worker so it works offline.

Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking | Psyche Ideas

This explains rubber ducking.

Speaking out loud is not only a medium of communication, but a technology of thinking: it encourages the formation and processing of thoughts.

Oh Hello Ana - Six talks later

I really admire Ana’s honesty here in confronting her inner critic (who she calls “side B Ana”).

The Return of New Adventures

Westley came along to my workshop at New Adventures …and liked it! (phew!)

I have long been a proponent of progressive enhancement on the web, perhaps before I knew the true value of it to the people that use the things we build for the web, but Jeremy has always been able to expand my understanding of its importance in the wider scope of things, how it inherently builds resilience into your products, and how it makes it more widely available to people across the world, in vastly different scenarios. The workshop itself was fluid enough to cater to the topics that the attendees were interested in; from over-arching philosophy to technical detail around service workers and new APIs. It has helped me to understand that learning in this kind of environment doesn’t have to be rigorously structured, and can be shaped as the day progresses.

Read on to discover how I incorporated time travel into the day’s activities.

setInterval(_=>{ document.body.innerHTML = [ …”😮😀😁😐😑😬” ][~~(Math.random()*6)] },95)

A tiny snippet of JavaScript for making an animation of a talking emoji face.

Talking about talking CSS

I had the great pleasure of finally meeting Hui Jing when Mozilla invited me along to Singapore to speak at their developer roadshow. Hui Jing is speaking at each one of the events on the roadshow, and documenting the journey here.

She’s being very modest about her talk: it was superb! Entertaining and informative in equal measure, delivered with gusto. Seriously, frontend conference organisers, try to get Hui Jing to speak about CSS at your event—you won’t regret it.

Brendan Dawes - Things I’ve learnt so far from speaking at conferences

Brendan’s list of dos and don’ts (mostly don’ts) from his years of conference speaking.

Your Voice - TimKadlec.com

The most important rule to follow when giving a talk or writing is to be yourself. I can learn just about any topic out there from a million different posts or talks. The reason I’m listening to you is because I want to hear your take. I want to know what you think about it, what you’ve experienced. More than anything, I want your authenticity. I want you to be you.

My talk writing process (so far) | Charlotte Jackson, Front-end developer

Charlotte outlines the process she used in creating her talk at Dot York. It was a real joy to see it come together.

Outline Your Talk with Presenter Notes — Ladies in Tech

Continuing the topic of public speaking, Jenn has a really good technique for figuring out how to arrange the pieces of your talk without getting bogged down in designing slides.

How to prepare and write a tech conference talk | wunder

Lena’s in-depth run-down of how she puts together a conference talk. If you’re new to public speaking, this is well worth reading.

Be comfortable looking like an idiot by Charlotte Jackson

I was talking to Charlotte recently about public speaking, confidence, and overcoming fear. She really hit the nail on the head when she said “I need to get comfortable with feeling like an idiot.”

Words to live by—especially if you’re working on the web.

Talking design

Mariana Mota is writing a book on the collaborative design process. She’s sharing her research videos as she goes.

The first video features Gerry Leonidas.

Altitude 2013 - A web event in Portsmouth, 100 meters above sea level

In a very mundane take on the cliché of a climactic showdown, I’ll be having a chat with Paul Boag at the top of Spinnaker Tower in February. Come on by if you’re in the neighbourhood.

Fuck you, Google « Fugitivus

A frightening tale of just how badly Google messed up with the lack of privacy controls on Buzz.

Rands In Repose: Out Loud

Some good advice on preparing presentations.

Your Daily Awesome » David Byrne Interviews David Byrne, 1984

This video of David Byrne from Stop Making Sense era Talking Heads is as brilliant and wacky as you'd expect. David Bynre is teh awsum.

Main Page - MakeMeASpeaker

Meri has created a wiki where would-be speakers can get advice and mentoring from established speakers. I don't know if I'm established but I'm offering my services.