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Sam Jarman 👨🏼‍💻
Sam Jarman 👨🏼‍💻

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If you want to start public speaking, just ask

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What you might not realise that a lot of organisers of internal conferences, meetups, external conferences and more actually want speakers. One of the biggest fears for these people is that no one wants to speak at their conference, and then no one attends. There are literally thousands (if not more) of dollars at stake when organising a conference, so applying to speak or offering a short talk at a meetup will bring a massive smile to the organiser's ear. So reach out, say "I have an idea for a talk since I've done xyz recently".

After that, it's a numbers game. Apply for every darn CFP, the process in which you make a proposal for a talk, you see (that makes sense). Some more practical tips - there are many tech conference aggregators out there (Callback Women, etc). They go deep with information such as travel and accommodation assistance and sometimes childcare. There are also many, many articles online in most communities of "conferences on technology x" that are worth subscribing to and keeping an eye on.

Heads up: As with any terse bit of advice, there will be exceptions of course, and subtleties and nuance that can't possibly be captured in a Byte of Wisdom. This has been what I've experienced, I'd love to hear yours in the comments too!

You can catch up with all the other bytes at http://bytesofwisdom.com/

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