You -- Yes, You -- Can Speak at a Conference

I've been having this talk with the coworkers a lot lately. So let's talk about it here, shall we?

You, O budding programmer (or non-programmer) can speak at a conference. Better yet, you can speak in a useful way and somebody will enjoy it. Let's talk about why.

You've done a couple of weeks of work on something at some point, right? Maybe it was regular expressions. Or Ruby on Rails controllers. Or learned a little about Rust or Haskell. Or how to solve a Rubik's cube. You're literate (because you're reading this post) which means you learned how to do something at some point.

When you were doing that work, you know who would have been perfect to help you out? Future-you, a few weeks or months further along in the same task.

Six months on, you've forgotten a bunch of what problems you had. If you became amazing at the same task, you forgot everything you used to have trouble with (it turns out that it's called "the curse of knowledge" and it's totally a thing.)

Which means that whatever you've spent a few weeks on (or a few months, or a few years,) you are perfect to help out the person who is a few weeks behind you.

If you're only a few weeks in, you can submit that as a talk to perfect beginners -- and you're the best person in the world to help them out.

Or if you've been doing something for a few years (Ruby programming, databases, competitive eating), you're the perfect person to help other people out who are farther along.

If you've put the time into something, that's a pretty good indicator that somebody finds it interesting. You did.

If you can't find a talk about stuff you're doing -- great, you should give one!

So stop every week or three at work or play. Scribble down what you're working on. And now next time you want to submit and idea for a talk, use one of those.

And you'll know you're the perfect person to give that talk. And you a few weeks (or months) earlier is who you should say the talk is for.

Got it?