Pitching the perfect Laracon talk - Michael Dyrynda
Good day, and welcome back to the Hallway Track podcast, the show that aims to please and pleases to aim. My name is Mitchell Davis, and I've got a really interesting and hopefully inspiring episode for you today. I spoke with Michael Durinda, the organizer of Laricon Australia and 50 other things about what makes a good conference talk. We finding a topic, how to pitch it to a conference, tips for first timers, and we go back and forth on some of my own speaking ambitions. I came away from this conversation feeling inspired, and I'm really hoping I get selected to speak at Laracon Australia this year where I want to talk about building mobile apps for Laravelook developers.
Mitchell Davis:If that's the type of thing that interests you, do me a favor and follow me on Twitter. I'm Mitch Daff, and there's a link in the show notes. I'm just embarking on getting the good word out there about app development in the Laravel space, and it'd mean the world to me if you'll join me for the ride. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. And if it inspires you to submit your own talk, let me know.
Mitchell Davis:Cheers. Michael, could you introduce yourself for me, please?
Michael Dyrynda:Yes. Hello. I am Michael Dyrynda. For those of you who don't know me, I've been part of the Laravel community since 2012, and I guess publicly so since since 2014. So I'm a software developer by day working in in Laravel day to day.
Michael Dyrynda:I also run, or co host the Laravel News Podcast, the North Meet South Podcast, the Ripples Podcast. I run the Laracon AU Conference. And just generally, depending on who you ask, I'm a I'm a pest on Twitter. So
Mitchell Davis:You're an overachiever.
Michael Dyrynda:That's me. That's me in a nutshell. Overachiever. Tell me about it.
Mitchell Davis:You got too much going on. Plus, you have a family, kids. Yeah. It's all going on for you.
Michael Dyrynda:Yes.
Mitchell Davis:Look, today we're gonna talk about, what makes a good conference talk. So, specifically with the context of you running Laracon Australia, at the time of recording and if I'm a good, editor, at the time of release later today, there will be I think there's 1 week to go until submissions close for Laracon. Awesome. So I'm gonna pick your brain on what makes a good talk. Let's get started by saying, why should people submit talks to conferences?
Mitchell Davis:What are some of the benefits? Why would you do it?
Michael Dyrynda:So there are some obvious benefits to submitting to conferences, and this is going to vary depending on which conference you submit to. I know that Laracon US, Laracon EU. I know, obviously, that Laracon AU, we will reimburse speakers to fly. We put them in hotels. We make that a really good and supportive experience and something that I, as an organizer in the specific for Laracon AU now trying to is to make the speaking experience really welcoming, really, approachable and and and kind of a shared experience among the speakers.
Michael Dyrynda:So, you know, lots of lots of people out there are shopping their talks around to different conferences. It's it's it's blunt to say, but lots of people are are using it as a way to to travel and see the world at, you know, not at someone else's expense. I I totally get that, you know, we are offering it. So I'm not blind to the fact that some people are wanting to do that. But what what we try and do is to make the each year's cohort of speakers have the opportunity to become a group of friends, which I think makes for a really good experience for attendees.
Michael Dyrynda:But also it kind of makes things a little bit easier for the speakers. Now, there's there's seasoned experienced speakers on on any conference panel. There is first timers in a lot of cases, people that are new to the community. We try and bring people in from outside the Laravel community that have interesting things to say. And so, you know, we try and make that an enjoyable experience and a stress free experience for those speakers.
Michael Dyrynda:So, you know, as much as what people see as attendees of a conference, the the work that goes into putting those things in, there's, like, as much of my time goes into making sure that the speakers are are supported as well. And this from from what I've heard from some of the the more experienced speakers, it's not it's not like a common thing. Not every conference is going out of the way. There don't get me wrong. There's a lot of things on conference organizers' plates.
Michael Dyrynda:But, you know, we we try and really make that an enjoyable experience, you know, in terms of lights and accommodation and and and communicating. Like, communication is is the key. Speakers come to a conference to give a talk, to communicate with the audience. Well, I'm communicating with those speakers from when they submit to when we invite them to, like, all the way up. We we had a Telegram group last year, you know, a month or 2 before the conference, which, you know, prove really valuable.
Michael Dyrynda:Those speakers got to hang out. They got to talk to each other. Those that were in Brisbane, I know, got to shop their talks to each other to to get feedback and and things like that. So it's, it's a unique experience for for people to speak at a conference, but it is also a shared experience.
Mitchell Davis:Okay. It's me in the edit here. At this point, my internet disconnected me from the call. So, this next little part, you'll hear is us readjusting Michael finishing his thoughts on why you should put yourself out there and why you would wanna speak at a conference. Oh my god.
Mitchell Davis:What the hell? I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened.
Michael Dyrynda:That's right. I stopped. I had finished my thoughts. I think
Mitchell Davis:you caught all of it. Yeah. Well, that was what a fantastic answer. You got it so much stuff. I missed the end of it.
Mitchell Davis:I had a great, reply for you. But anyway It's alright. You've definitely covered all the benefits there. That was impressive.
Michael Dyrynda:Yeah. Getting getting up on the stage and and speaking, and and that is, like, that is that is really the finish line of of this the the experience. And depending on like, some people only submit to 1 conference a year. Some people only submit to Laracon AU. Some people only submit to NDC or some.
Michael Dyrynda:Some people shop around to heaps of conferences. You know? Some people that have more general PHP talks will submit to, you know, Dutch PHP and Laracon and, you know, PHP Tech just happened late last month. And so depending on what kind of your talk is, you know what? You might shop it around, but some people put all their eggs in in the Laracon basket and and they go 100% for that.
Michael Dyrynda:So it depends on on what you want to get out of speaking, really. But it's it's an excellent thing as well for the first timers or or people just, you know, not not only first time speakers, but people that are new to what they're learning. Like, it's a great experience for them to really share what they're in the moment for, what they're learning right now, where they're most passionate about it, where they're most familiar with that subject. And so that often people think, I'm not going to speak because I'm not an expert in this. That's that's not, you know, everyone up there is not necessarily there to be an expert in what they're talking about.
Michael Dyrynda:They're there to share their perspective of what they're talking about. I think that's a key mind shift that you wanna be in as a speaker. It's I'm sharing my experience of this thing. It's not there to say that this is the way that is. There are certain topics, of course, that, like, there is definitive answers.
Michael Dyrynda:But in in software dev, there's just many different ways to do the same thing. And your perspective, your experience may be the thing that resonates with someone in the audience in a way that it hasn't previously. They might have heard about something 10 times, but it could be your perspective that that helps them really get it.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. 100 percent. Well said. Let's talk about some of the different types of talks that, a speaker can give. So there are technical talks, there are soft talks, and that's kind of a pretty varied definition.
Mitchell Davis:Maybe I can get your definition of that. But, are there any other types of talks that you've seen, people could submit?
Michael Dyrynda:I think those broadly, especially in, like, the perspective of Laracon, are are the 2 types of talks. There is, like, a third category which you could kind of say is the more business y type of things, where you're coming and talking about how to run a SaaS, how to run a business. It's always a delicate thing because you've got all of these people over here, you know, companies, employees that are sending their people to learn about Laravel. And there's always the you know, from my perspective, we've gotta balance that. We can't have too much of that.
Michael Dyrynda:But, like, Laracon is such a cross sectional framework that it, you know, it covers bootstrappers. It covers fortune 5 100. It covers, you know, someone that is an accountant aspiring to, you know, not be an accountant, to be a programmer. You know, it's there's so many perspectives and so many uses for and of the framework that that you have a lot to cover. And so, you know, you and I talked before the show that, Taylor mentioned that that a talk that you submit that has broad appeal is going to be more likely to be picked than something that is hyper specific.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Absolutely. Let's talk about soft talks then. What have been some of the standout soft talks, which are, I guess yeah. By by definition, we're we're saying a nontechnical talks.
Mitchell Davis:Mhmm.
Michael Dyrynda:What
Mitchell Davis:are some of the best talks that you've seen that would be classified as soft talks that you think are really interesting for people?
Michael Dyrynda:Not not specific talks, but there are 2 speakers that have given really good talks in the past that I would consider to be soft talks. Aaron Francis spoke at Laracon US last year. His talk is you know, it is a deeply personal experience telling. You know? It's a story of how he put himself out there, how things didn't go his way.
Michael Dyrynda:And and it wasn't like the end of the road for him, for those of you who know who Aaron is. It was it was a stepping stone to the next thing. Jack McDade is another one that has given these kinds of talks in the past. The these kinds of, talks where it's talking about personal experience, it's talking about battling your own circumstances. Nina spoke last year at Laracon AU talking about, you know, her her passion for programming that her circumstance where, like, purely by where she was born, you know, being born in Bosnia, being female growing up there, that she was just that's not for you.
Michael Dyrynda:You know? And and being able to persist. Like, those are the soft talks. There there's also, like, these kinds of talks that straddle the the 2, where, Padama spoke last year about accessibility, or not accessibility, but well, yeah. I I guess it was accessibility, really, in terms of UI user experience, in terms of how, you know, introducing friction into an application.
Michael Dyrynda:Like, that's a technical thing, user experience, but it's also getting into the into the mind of the user and why you would introduce friction. So but, yeah, commonly. Right? We've got soft. We've got technical.
Michael Dyrynda:We've got business. Like, those are the 3 main sort of Laracon talks. Yeah. Absolutely.
Mitchell Davis:Well, regardless of the type of talk, in your opinion, what goes into making a good conference talk? That can be as broad as you want. I've got some ideas. Is it based on the subject itself? Is it passion from the speaker about the subject?
Mitchell Davis:I'm sure it's a combination of the 2. Is there anything else that makes a talk good?
Michael Dyrynda:The topic, the talk is the hook. Right? The title of your talk is the hook. For us, that's what we publish first. We publish the talk titles.
Michael Dyrynda:We don't tell you who's speaking. We tell you what they're talking about. And so it's gotta catch the eye. It's gotta be thought provoking. It might even be controversial.
Michael Dyrynda:And a and a good talk, at that point, is just the title. It's it's probably partly the abstract, but the abstract doesn't have to be long. You don't have to have a talk. But for a for a talk to be good on a stage, you have to be energised. You have to have been practised.
Michael Dyrynda:You have to know what you're saying. You don't. And, again, it's your perspective. So you need to back yourself in. Yes.
Michael Dyrynda:And you need to believe every word that you're delivering on the stage. It's not it's not about being right or wrong necessarily. It's it's about having energy and passion and legwork
Mitchell Davis:and footwork.
Michael Dyrynda:It's, you know, it's you you get up there and you wanna deliver. You you're telling a story to the audience at that point. And, you know, even if it is code heavy, you don't want to get out there and just drone into the microphone and, you know, talk like this and say, I'm now gonna show this thing. You don't need to say I'm going to show this thing. Okay?
Michael Dyrynda:We're we're all in the room. We're looking at what you're doing. You need to do the thing. Explain what you've done, but not like I'm gonna show you this. We're gonna talk about this, etcetera, etcetera.
Michael Dyrynda:So energy and passion is are the 2 the 2 main things. You know, be excited about what you're talking about. That's that's why I say, you know, when you are learning something is when you are most excited about it, and the the excitement is contagious. The audience will feel the excitement if you're excited by it. If you're up there and you're like, been doing this for 10 years, I don't think there's much interesting about it.
Michael Dyrynda:But I thought I might share it with you. Like no? Nothing?
Mitchell Davis:Get out of here. Yeah.
Michael Dyrynda:And, like, it is it is hard. Like, the amount of time that goes into trying to figure out, like, is and and and we love don't get me wrong. We love to have new people speaking at Laracon AU. I think, diversifying the speaker pool and and not having just the same faces all the time is really important because it keeps it keeps things fresh. But it's also, like, a bit of a risk when you don't know, you know, who these speakers are, what they're gonna do, what they're going to be like, which is, you know, somewhat selfishly, another reason why we we communicate so openly and frequently with our speakers to the point where I'm asking them, am I communicating too much?
Michael Dyrynda:Because, you know, you really need to you you put faith in the the people that you put on stage that that that the audience is gonna enjoy what they have to say.
Mitchell Davis:Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. I I've I've been seeing in, some of the Slack groups that we're in and speaking with some other people on Twitter that want to submit talks, but they're having trouble finding the topic, finding that hook. Do you have any suggestions on if someone is and this was me, actually.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Probably for, like, 6 months before I submitted for last year's
Michael Dyrynda:Mhmm.
Mitchell Davis:Barricon. I sat there and I was like, I really wanna speak. I've the first time I went to Laracon was 2019, and, I completely missed the announcement for 2018. Otherwise, I would have gone. But, yeah, I found out about 2019.
Mitchell Davis:I was like, oh my god. I gotta go to this. This is awesome. I got there. I was sitting in the audience, and I was like, I wish I was up there, man.
Mitchell Davis:Like, I could do this. I just didn't know what to talk about. Right? And then I, COVID hit, then you announced 2023. And for the whole time that submissions were open, I was like,
Michael Dyrynda:what the hell am
Mitchell Davis:I gonna talk about? You know, I've got something to say, but I don't know what I don't know what to talk about. Finally, I got it in, I think, like, a week before submissions closed or something like that. I got in a topic, about webhooks, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But, But, for people like me that are in that situation right now, do you have any tips for them for how they can find a topic?
Mitchell Davis:Is it based on what they're passionate about? If anything, hopefully, they are. But if not, maybe do they have a unique insight, you know, or have they worked on something that's been maybe there's something interesting there in the last 6 months, you know, that they've worked on at at work, you know. Do you have any other suggestions?
Michael Dyrynda:Mhmm. People often ask me this, like, what do I talk about? My perspective is I don't know. If I knew what to talk about, if I knew, this kind of stuff, I would be speaking at a conference. I wouldn't be organising it.
Michael Dyrynda:I have the benefit of looking at a pool of submissions. And like I said, the title is the thing. Right? I look at this list of submissions, and I scan down the list, and I tick tick tick tick. Nah.
Michael Dyrynda:Nah. Tick. Nah. And I shortlist them. Right?
Michael Dyrynda:So it's the title that grabs me. I'm like, that's interesting. But you are you are right. It's the thing that excites you. It's every everyone has a unique perspective.
Michael Dyrynda:That's the thing about being human. We all have a unique perspective. We all have a unique take. And that's what you bring to the table. That's what you bring to the stage is your unique perspective.
Michael Dyrynda:If you want to speak, but you find that you're trying to think, what do I speak about? I think you've slightly missed the mark in that. Like, don't look at what you think would be good for other people. Think about what you can deliver that you believe in with your unique spin. And that, as you say, it could be something that you work on daily.
Michael Dyrynda:It could be something that you've worked on for 5 years and you because you've been doing it for 5 years. Number 1, you are an expert in it. Number 2, you are so numb to the perspective because you've been doing it for 5 years. That's the thing that you talk about because you could talk about it in your sleep. You know it like the back of your hand.
Michael Dyrynda:So now it's a matter of distilling some some bits and pieces. Like, when you submitted the the webhooks talk last year, you knew that you were in, like, the final 3. I was trying to pick 1 out of the last 3.
Mitchell Davis:And That was heartbreaking, by the way. Sitting there watching you pick someone else.
Michael Dyrynda:So I was
Mitchell Davis:like, no.
Michael Dyrynda:And I told you that, you know, you have got to submit this talk again because it was so close to to where we needed to fill a spot. And I don't remember. Like, this probably burned into your brain. This is but, like, I don't honestly don't remember what what the talk was that that we picked in instead because a lot has happened since then. But that's something that no doubt is in your mind that has now spurned you on to submit again this year.
Mitchell Davis:I do, but I won't say it. Let's keep it on
Michael Dyrynda:the list. Was it but but, like, I think you did say to me I don't like I said, I don't remember the talk. You did say to me, you're like, that was a good talk. That was a good pick. So
Mitchell Davis:It was a good talk. And that's me being humble and say, yep. Okay. You know, it's fine. I would have loved to got my speaking career started last year, but you did pick a good talk.
Mitchell Davis:So yeah. So all water out of the bridge. And it spurred me on to where I'm at now. Like, it's it that is a large part of why I'm doing this. I'm recording the show and, you know, I started putting myself out there on Twitter and all of that.
Mitchell Davis:Like, it it has come from being rejected, which is interesting. You know? It's an interesting way to look at it.
Michael Dyrynda:Yeah. Yeah. We we have this a lot with my 5 year old at the moment when, like, he can go from 0 to a100 very quickly when things don't go his way. Like, he when things go his way, he loves it. But when when things go against him or he doesn't win or he doesn't get something straight away, he just goes and gets really upset about it.
Michael Dyrynda:And, you know, we calm him down, and we and we bring him back. We're like, you know, you've just got to try again. You've just gotta you gotta dust yourself off. There's there's a saying which I will misquote, but it's like, if you fall down 7 times, you have to get up 8 times. Yeah.
Michael Dyrynda:It's the getting up that we learn from. It's not the falling down. And so, yeah, it's it's it's not we have 17, maybe 18 talk slots each year. We get orders of magnitude more submissions than we have talk slots. So it is very hard.
Michael Dyrynda:So, you know, as I said, the title, the abstract, you don't have to have a talk. You've got months to put a talk together. You've got support of your peers. You've got support of the community. There are local meetups sprouting up all over the place now where you can go and practice these talks and get feedback and and see if they resonate and adjust them and, like, you know, tweak them to to something.
Michael Dyrynda:Plenty of time to to work on that. Don't worry about not having a talk. Just worry about having an an idea and making sure that the idea is something that that can that can hook interest and that you truly believe. Okay. If this gets picked, can I give an engaging, exciting talk?
Michael Dyrynda:That's that's what it boils down to. And, like Yep. How many people will will get value from this talk?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. That sort of goes to the point of you're right. We we were talking about it there, before we started recording, but, yeah, Matt and, Taylor on a recent episode of, the Laravel podcast. I'll link it in the show notes, but they were talking but specifically, Taylor was talking about how he picks talks, and, he made the suggestion there of pick a a general kind of talk, like 10 ways to supercharge your Laravel development experience. That's gonna apply to literally every person in the crowd.
Mitchell Davis:Mhmm. Right? But he then brought up a more niche example, 10 ways to build iOS native apps using Swift, and that probably won't apply to everyone in the Laravel audience. So you do have to pick a talk that will meet the audience, definitely. But if you can try and find your own well, yeah, try and find something from your own experience that would interest a large portion of the crowd, you know, you think will interest them, it sounds like that's the go.
Mitchell Davis:So you just gotta dig deep and try and find something for it.
Michael Dyrynda:And and not everything has to be new. Not everything has to be groundbreaking. It just has to be your unique perspective on something. Something that you are, as I said, passionate about that that you want to deliver, that you think I can do this in a different way that hasn't been done before. I've got a different look or a different outlook or a different perspective.
Michael Dyrynda:All of those synonyms for the same thing. But to drive home the point that, like, that's what it's about.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Look, we sort of danced around it a bit, but I recently submitted a few talks for Laracon Australia.
Michael Dyrynda:Mhmm.
Mitchell Davis:I've submitted 3 so far, and I think that will be all since you and I have talked a little more. I think I've got my best submissions in. Mhmm. After thinking about the 3 submissions that I put in, I became extremely confident that a talk about building mobile apps, and getting them to talk to a Laravel backend was the talk that I really wanted to give if I was to be selected. So I kinda got the the feeling from you that you had, like, brushed this talk off.
Mitchell Davis:I didn't quite sell it in the with the title in the abstract. And after thinking about it, like, I literally I went away. I I submitted those three talks before I went to Japan. I went on a 2 week trip to Japan just recently. The whole time I was like I was ruminating on this and, I came back and I was energized, and I was like, he's wrong.
Mitchell Davis:Like, the expo the mobile talk is the talk, and I I could feel it. Like, I know it in my heart of hearts. So I've if, again, if I get selected, I'm gonna deliver a really good talk, and I just have that confidence with this particular subject. So to try and change your mind, I recorded a 5 minute stream of consciousness. I I just got out voice memo or whatever it is on my phone.
Mitchell Davis:I recorded, just said, hey, this is what I want to do. I think you're wrong. This is, you know, how I think the talk would play out and all the different points. I'll try not to, spoil too much of it. But I sent it to you and I said, right, what do you think?
Mitchell Davis:And then I saw, you know, you were like, oh, man. I've just shortlisted a bunch. This one didn't make the cut. Let me have another think about it. And then I felt pretty good later because I saw you tweeted about it.
Mitchell Davis:You put it on LinkedIn. You didn't say my name, which was a good call, but you were like, you know, just had someone send me a voice memo pitching their talk, you know, more than what you could do with the title in abstract, to try and convince you it was the right one. Clearly, you didn't mind that approach, but in general, what do you think about sort of going above and beyond? If you if you feel really confident in a talk idea and you may be a little worried it's not gonna get picked, what do you think about doing something like that?
Michael Dyrynda:Have you ever had a conversation with someone on Slack or Telegram or Messenger or whatever it is that you use? And the response that you've got back has interpreted what you've written in a way that you didn't mean at all.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah.
Michael Dyrynda:That's that's sometimes what reading the abstracts can be like. It's like it was, but but as I said earlier, the it's the passion. Like, you put in the 5 minutes and, you know, obviously, the the 2 weeks of thinking about it before that to really think about this and and really have the the passion for it. And, like, we've talked about this. It is the passion for the topic.
Michael Dyrynda:And I was, like, yeah. Mobile apps for Laravel seems seems fine. Like, it's a thing. And, like, I know that there's always businesses out there that are like, we've got this web app, but like, what if we had a mobile app? What if we put this on the tablet?
Michael Dyrynda:What if we, you know, all of this stuff? So, you know, it's definitely something that comes up. Is it is it a huge part of the Laravel audience? No. I don't think so.
Mitchell Davis:But I'm gonna try and change that, by the way. But yep.
Michael Dyrynda:But I but I think it is a big enough part of the audience that it is a niche that that could be interesting. And and your energy for the idea, you know, that you really believe that it can be done, that you can talk about all of this stuff in in good detail, and that you can make it make it sell in 30 minutes on the stage. Maybe reconsider. There's there's lots of, as I said, businesses out there that wanna do that. There's lots of businesses that are, like, 1 or 2 developers that they're like they're not going to have expertise in, you know, in Swift or in Kotlin or or, you know, whatever else.
Michael Dyrynda:They're gonna reach for something like React Native or or or whatnot to do these things because that's the tool chain that they have. And if there are ways that you can tie those things together, then, you know, you're you're giving people the tools. You're you're at least putting them in a direction. Like, this is a thing that I have done. These are the tools that I have used.
Michael Dyrynda:The the expertise and the experience that I have tells me that it can be done in an enjoyable way that, you know, you can use what you already know to deliver new and real value to the the places that you already work. And so for me, that fills the niche. That fills that you know, checks that box for, like, okay. Assuming that we have this number of companies and this many people that are wanting to, like, find something that they can bring back to their business, This is the kind of talk that will check those boxes, that will make, you know, those people be able to go back to their employment and be like, hey, I learned this thing. Maybe we could explore this.
Michael Dyrynda:So, yeah, passion, energy.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And using your voice is such a superpower to be able to go yeah. To rise above text or, you know, if I had really, pushed it, I would have recorded a little video, like a Loom video or something like that. Because then you can see someone's face, you know, as they're as they're describing what they wanna talk about and see that enthusiasm and all of that. Like, it really comes across.
Mitchell Davis:So is this something that you would want more people to do? Would you want to now, all of a sudden, receive a little voice recording with every talk, Or does that make it a bit too hard? What does that imply?
Michael Dyrynda:Maybe. I mean, I look, as easy as Laravel makes file uploads, I hate dealing with file uploads, but we could next year. I'm not gonna do it now. But we could next year put in the, like, a give us give us a 60 second spiel for your abstract. Like, just talk me through what you want.
Michael Dyrynda:And and it'll be, like, either send send the title in the abstract or send the title and a voice thing and, like, sell it to me. I think that's probably asking too much of speakers, to do it, like to enforce it. But certainly for those who feel like they can't get it across in text, yeah, I'd listen. I I think that's that's fine. Yeah.
Michael Dyrynda:Using using your voice is, is a really powerful tool. Because, I saw a there's a he's a vocal I don't know what he's so I saw this guy perform at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, like, 8 or 9 years ago as a mentalist and a magician. And he is now, like, an internationally renowned public speaking coach. Does, like, all of this vocal training and things like that. And he'd, like, popped into my TikTok feed last year, and I've been following him on YouTube and picking up some of the stuff that he's doing.
Michael Dyrynda:And and and talking about, you know, that your voice is is an instrument that you play, it's not a tool that you use. And it can convey so much just from the tone of your voice from, you know, something that we we typically do in Australia is we, like, end sentences on a high note, and it makes us sound like we're asking a question. Do we really believe what we're saying, or do we really believe what we're saying? You know, just just the the uptalk, he calls it. Just the inflection that goes up at the end of a sentence or goes down at the end of the sentence really changes the the meaning of that.
Michael Dyrynda:And, and like, that's something that you don't get in text. Text is just text. You can't convey emotion and context and all of that kind of stuff just in text. So yeah. Alright.
Michael Dyrynda:Maybe next year, we do do audio submissions. I'll only listen to the first Give
Mitchell Davis:me the go.
Michael Dyrynda:60 seconds, though. So don't send me, like, you know, 10 minute history of the world.
Mitchell Davis:Did you did you listen to all of mine? Or did you already do the first 60 seconds? I don't know.
Michael Dyrynda:I listened to all of yours. Only because it was the first one. If I got, like, heaps of 5 minute ones, I'd be like, yeah. Tell me in in 60 seconds or less. You know, every time there's, like, one of those competitions in 25 words or less, I'm like, I just wanna put my name and email address in a form.
Michael Dyrynda:I don't wanna put the f in it. Yep. Like, who I I I'm interested to know, like, the kinds of people that win those things and and what they're saying.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. What does it take to win a competition like that? Yeah. 100%. Well, maybe you could for the voice recording things, maybe you could then have it transcribed.
Michael Dyrynda:Transcribed.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. And then you you you get best of both worlds.
Michael Dyrynda:That's right. And scan it. It's going, what does this sound like? How have they presented this message?
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Just gotta have the confidence.
Michael Dyrynda:Super thought.
Mitchell Davis:Yeah. Cool. Okay. So let's say that your talk ID gets picked. Right?
Mitchell Davis:So you've gone through all of this, the prospective speaker, talk gets picked, and, now you need to actually start prepping the talk. So on this timeline am I right? Just correct me if I'm wrong. Are you announcing oh, sorry. Are you telling people who has been selected by the end of May?
Mitchell Davis:Is that right?
Michael Dyrynda:Yeah. If if you've been selected to speak, we'll let you know by the end of May, end of this month.
Mitchell Davis:Cool. And
Michael Dyrynda:so you've got June, July, August, September, October, 5 Yep. 5 months and 1 week. Yeah. Work on that talk. Don't Beautiful.
Michael Dyrynda:To the last 2 weeks, please.
Mitchell Davis:I, I'm very hopeful. So I already got started on on my talk. But we'll see. There's there's no guarantees in life. So let's say your talk did get picked.
Mitchell Davis:You've now got 6 months to start prepping. So should you be thinking about how to tailor the content of your talk to your audience? Because you mentioned before there'll be some people that will have, maybe given this talk before, maybe in different audiences. Like, does that really come into play? Would you be suggesting that?
Michael Dyrynda:It depends on the audience. If you and this is the thing. It is it is hard for me to get someone who spoke at Laracon AU or someone who speaks at Laracon US to come to Laracon AU and give the same talk. Right? Because all eyes are on those conferences.
Michael Dyrynda:Now we've asked Taylor in the past, and we've asked Laracon AU people in the past. It's like, hey. Can you not publish this specific talk until after Laracon AU? Because we want people to experience it. It's it's it's not fair on this.
Michael Dyrynda:Like, it's easy on the speaker because they get to give the same talk again. They get to augment it. They get to improve it. Whatever. Yes.
Michael Dyrynda:But it's not fair on the speaker to give a talk to the same audience in a different part of the world, if that makes sense. Yep. So, yeah, if you're if you're taking a talk, we've done it in the past. We've had people from NDC or web directions, whatever, bring that same talk. Like, I've sought those people out because there's not a lot of overlap in those communities.
Michael Dyrynda:But they do a good job of of adapting the talks. It's important that, like, you don't just give a generic talk unless it is, you know, is the kind of thing that can be generic. You wanna you wanna tailor it a little bit. My advice in terms of putting a talk together is to just spend the first 2, 3, 4 weeks just writing notes down. Just when you're out walking the dog, when you're, you know, on your morning commute, if you still go to an office on the, you know, on the train or whatever, just jot notes down.
Michael Dyrynda:Just write things down. Open up Apple Notes. It's fine. And and just put everything down. Doesn't have to be in any coherent order.
Michael Dyrynda:Doesn't have to have any structure. It's just here are all of the thoughts that I've had on this topic. This and and for context, this is how I put together my welcome address last year. It was just over a period of 2, 3 months on my morning walks, just writing things down. Random tweets that I saw, random ideas that I had, just putting them all in there.
Michael Dyrynda:And and really, like, I didn't start putting my slides together until 6 weeks before the conference. But I've been going over in my head for 2, 3 months beforehand. Okay. This is what I wanna talk about. This is what I wanna say.
Michael Dyrynda:I've got a and I I didn't even know how all of the pit bits fit together. I just had, like, a whole bunch of ideas, and it was not until I threaded the needle through you know, once you once you have everything, you can kind of figure out, alright, don't need this this. You know, you can see the patterns. He's like, here's the the line through through the mark. And then you can start kind of structuring things and figuring out how you wanna tell that story, and the and the order that you that you wanna tell that story.
Michael Dyrynda:So I think, you know, that's that's the way that I approach it. It's just ideas, dot points, random thoughts here and there. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes you come back to that after 4 months after 4 weeks of, like, just jotting ideas down and going, what was I thinking there? Like, I don't I don't even know what this is.
Michael Dyrynda:So you've got to be careful to, like, provide enough context to come back to it. But that's that's, I think, a good good way of nutting it out over over a period of time. And and as you say, you've got 5 and a bit months to to work on it. I I know that conference speakers have spent hours and hours and hours putting the talk together, talking, you know, practicing the talk, writing it, testing it. It's an hour long.
Michael Dyrynda:I need to cut half of it, scrapping it, starting again. The thing with all of this work is that you really, really hone the message. You really figure out what you're gonna say and how you're gonna say it. I did the announcement video for the conference last week, and I did 58 takes of the opening 2 sentences, partly because I was scripting on the fly, partly because I forgot how to speak English. But it's it's in in doing that that it becomes organic.
Michael Dyrynda:And and you practice it so much that even though you know exactly what you're gonna say, it's like acting. Right? Mhmm. I practice those lines over and over and over again. They they they work on the intonation and the, you know, when they're gonna inflect what you know, the inflection of the intonation and how they're gonna say the things, and they know where they're at and how and and it and it comes out on stage when you've really nailed that message.
Michael Dyrynda:You know exactly what you're gonna say and how
Mitchell Davis:you're gonna say it. How should speakers handle their nerves If they are people that get nervous. Right? And some people are just very naturally gifted with public speaking, doesn't make them nervous. But if you're not so gifted in that, have you got any advice, on on how to overcome that?
Michael Dyrynda:My number one piece of advice of something not to do is to not drink. Please do not get on stage inebriated. I have heard from a number of people that do get a bit nervous, And and I this makes sense to me as as a clown who gets on stage and just starts talking, is to script your first 2 or 3 minutes. You practice it over and over and over and over again, and you'll memorize it. But once you get on stage, you will find that, like me in front of a camera, you forget how to speak English.
Michael Dyrynda:And so having on your speaker notes the exact words that you are going to say and you because you're focusing on on your speaker notes, on the, comfort monitors, whatever, you're not gonna see the audience, and you you'll find yourself into the groove. You're like, yes. I know. I've practiced this a 1000 times. I know what I'm gonna say.
Michael Dyrynda:I know how I'm gonna say it. Those are the words right there. Once you get past those first 3 minutes and the adrenaline dies off, and you realize I can't actually see the audience, it's just blinding lights in my face. I think that's that's the best way to get through those nerves.
Mitchell Davis:Off to the races. I, I recently, February now, so 3 months ago, I spoke for the very first time at a Sydney meetup. Mhmm. So not not quite the same scale as Alarcon, but, I think there are about 20 people there.
Michael Dyrynda:Mhmm.
Mitchell Davis:I've spoken about it previously on this show, and, it went really well. It surprised me with how quickly I just was, like, yep. Let's just do this. Like, I was on I was on the road, you know. The pedal was was down.
Mitchell Davis:And, that was really good. It it it I made sure that I went and I used Matt and Taylor's advice from that same episode. They said, go and speak at a local meter. I said, cool. Let's do it.
Mitchell Davis:I reached out to the, Sydney organizers. I said, right. This is roughly what I wanna do. He said, cool. Yep.
Mitchell Davis:Let's do it. And then, that talk was a very, like, demo heavy talk. It was about AWS, and, I actually then submitted it to, Laracon for for you. Mhmm. And about it was, 10 plus dope things you can add to your Laravel app right now using AWS.
Mitchell Davis:And I walked through, I think there were 18 things. And it was meant to be, 30 minute talk and I took about 50 minutes. So you rightfully messaged me after and were like dude, you gotta chop that down, Like, make it 7 things, which was a good call. But anyway, I was a bit nervous about, giving it, but giving the talk, but I had done public speaking as a kid and, like, you know, having, yeah, meetings at work and stuff like that. Like, generally, I'm okay.
Mitchell Davis:I I turn into a a a puddle. But as I was, like, driving into, this meetup, I was like, man, I hope that just the juices start flowing and that it all goes well because I I hadn't given myself a ton of time to to practice. I didn't put the the practice time. But I knew the subject material really well because we use AWS all the time with work, and, we've been literally using, I think, about 15 of those 18 things that I demoed us, like, functionality that we have used on our own projects. So I really knew the stuff.
Mitchell Davis:And so once I got in and and and got going, it was just like, yep. This is really fun, and I just had an absolute ball with it. So I just wanna say from my perspective as a new speaker, go do that. Go do small scale meetups where there's a lot less pressure. You still wanna do a really good job.
Mitchell Davis:Give it your all, but, like, if you mess up, it's a heck of a lot less embarrassing than, you know, applying for your very first time speaking ever at a conference with 300 attendees. I think you'll you'll thank yourself for, doing it a few times earlier. And and if I am, selected, I may go back and speak again at, you know, a smaller meetup, and run the new material, just to make sure that it it hits right. You know? So that might be something that you can do to to manage nerves.
Michael Dyrynda:Mhmm.
Mitchell Davis:Cool. Okay. So, getting to our last few questions on this. Based on the type of talk, what are some of the differences in how you might prepare and deliver a technical talk versus a soft talk? You might have live coding or live demos of written code, which is what I just did in that AWS talk.
Mitchell Davis:You could have slides, and those slides might have lots of text versus just like the headlines and then, actually speaking out what you're trying to say or personal stories like you said. Is there anything else in there that you want to touch on about different delivery mechanisms for getting your message across?
Michael Dyrynda:Yeah. I mean, you touched on the main ones. I think Yep. Live coding on a stage in front of 3, 4, 5, 900 people is the hardest thing you are going to do. If if you've ever tried to, like, type, pair programming with someone that you know and you work with on a daily basis, you will find just how quickly you forget to type.
Michael Dyrynda:Now put yourself on the stage facing 300 people and figure out, like, you lose the ability to type. If you if you get something wrong, you suddenly lose the ability to to debug. And you, you know, you just Gone. It is it is a very Go on. It is it is a very difficult thing to do, and it is even harder to do it well.
Michael Dyrynda:And there are very few people. Nuna does it really well. Taylor does it really well. Adam Wadden, when he used to give talks, did it really well. Taylor Pozier does it really well.
Michael Dyrynda:It is the kind of thing that even with dozens or even hundreds of hours of practice, it is still like, all it takes is one slip off, one typo that you don't see, and and it becomes really challenging. The audience I have found by and large at Laracon, whether here or or abroad, is very supportive, and they want you to succeed. No one's gonna sit there and laugh at you in my experience. No one's gonna sit there and point the finger or anything like that. People will shout out, you missed a semicolon.
Michael Dyrynda:You've got to type over there. You know, all of that kind of stuff. I think if you're a first time speaker, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to do a live coding talk.
Mitchell Davis:But they're the fun ones. That's like you're right. It's hard mode.
Michael Dyrynda:But if you if you wanna see a good example of how you can put code on the screen in an engaging way, have a look at the talk that my buddy, Jake Bennett did at Laracon US last year.
Mitchell Davis:Right? We coach machines? You
Michael Dyrynda:know, yeah, the state machines talk that he did. He was going to live code it, and we said, no. Don't don't put the stress on yourself. Take all that code. Put it into Keynote.
Michael Dyrynda:You can like, with Keynote, you can paste real tech, RTF text in there so you can get all your syntax highlighting and stuff. And when you're putting code into a slide, unless you are specifically talking about types or, you know, you need that context for for whatever reason for what you're presenting, omit them. Don't use keywords. You know, don't have to put public function, you know, open parenthesis typed, you know, user dollar user return void. Like, none of that matters in the context of a talk.
Michael Dyrynda:Right? You are presenting an idea. You're not presenting functional code. You're trying to say, you know, this is how a state machine works. You're not.
Michael Dyrynda:It doesn't matter that this is a user model, that this is a returning a user resource or whatever else. You're trying to convey a message. And so the when when you can remove as much of, like, the Jeffrey Weigher, visual debt. Right? The visual noise.
Michael Dyrynda:Right? None of that. You you want people to focus only on what you're telling them. You don't need them to focus on whether it's syntactically correct or perfectly formatted or whatever. No.
Michael Dyrynda:Look here at these three lines of code or what we're trying to achieve. I think that is a really good approach because no one's gonna run that code. Like, code doesn't compile. It doesn't get executed by PHP. It's just presentational.
Michael Dyrynda:So and and and, like, takes a huge load off your shoulders to just show the code rather than having to try and type the code. You can do I don't remember who it was that they gave a talk, but like they just copy paste this stuff from their speaker notes into like, do that if you want to or or the Taylor Artwell, you know, scroll the routes file. Like, that's a pretty powerful approach if you if you wanted to show off some ideas in a browser. In terms of a soft talk, practice it. Practice the intonation, practice the delivery, practice the inflection and when you're gonna say what and how and and practice your pauses and, you know, leave gaps in your presentation.
Michael Dyrynda:Silence is a really good way to let your audience think about what you've just said and absorb it. It's also a really good way to cover up a mistake. Right? If you use silence as a way to communicate through your talk, when inevitably you lose your place or you forget what you were gonna say, you can naturally pause because you've been doing it through your whole talk. So for for so I mean, even for technical talks, leaving gaps, you don't have to fill every second of your 30 minutes with words unless you're Matt Stauffer, which case he crams 60 minutes of talking into a 30 minute slot.
Mitchell Davis:He's a machine.
Michael Dyrynda:So, yeah, those, I guess, those are my three bits of advice for those those three types of topics. You know, and not not that I have I mean, I've done I've done meetup talks. You know, I I used to run the the Adelaide PHP meetup. And so when we got my speakers, it was me at, you know, 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the meetup throwing something together. So I'm very good at, like, just like, oh, what was I working on today?
Michael Dyrynda:Yep. That sounds like a good talk topic. Yep. But but those from from the talks that and I have watched a lot of talks. Because I I do end up going and like like I said, when you're bringing a new person in to speak, you're gonna try and see as much as you can.
Michael Dyrynda:Have they presented anyway? Have they presented this topic? Have they presented other topics? What are they you know, how how do they convey their message? You know, that kind of stuff.
Michael Dyrynda:So those are the the 3 the 3 topics. Those are the kinds of things that I kind of, look for in terms of presentation to to see if I think that it has been a successful talk. We've been very fortunate, Laracon, that that we always get lots of high quality talks. And because there's lots of high quality talks that's a reinforcing mechanism that each each cohort of speakers that comes through irrespective of which Lark on it is wants to put on a good talk because there is, you know, a perception of of quality being up here. So people will put in the effort.
Michael Dyrynda:They will spend the time. They will, like Greg does, write and rewrite and rewrite his talks and practice and cut and call and and whatever else over a period of time. You have ample opportunity to do that. And, you know, we we had speakers in the wings in in the backstage area, like, all cheering each other on, gearing each other up to go out like you're about to talk. They're standing in the wings when you came off the stage.
Michael Dyrynda:Like, it's a very supportive. It's a share like I said, it's unique to each person, but it's a it's a shared experience. And it's you you're always gonna have the other speakers, I think, in your corner, especially at Laracon AU. Like, it's almost a requirement at this point.
Mitchell Davis:That's a really great advice in there. I think you've covered all the different types of talks, different ways that you might want to present it there. And this has been really insightful as a hopeful Laracon Australia speaker. So why don't we wrap it up there? Thank you for your time.
Mitchell Davis:We're gonna do another recording probably later, because this one's gone on a bit a bit long. But we are gonna go through about how you actually organized, Larricom Australia, how it came to be. So, keep an eye on your feed for that one. Yeah. Just thank you, Michael.
Mitchell Davis:This has been really awesome and super insightful.
Michael Dyrynda:No worries. Thanks.
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