Speak Up!

 UPDATE (24 March 2016)

I am no longer interested in giving talks on any of these topics or on anything related to tech diversity. For a list of topics, I would be interested in giving presentations on or (preferably) discussing a panel/roundtable session, see here.

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I just subscribed to the Technically Speaking mailing list  thinking I’d be helpful and keep an eye out for potential conferences to which our developers might want to submit abstracts/proposals. However, one item towards the bottom caught my interest enough to click. It was Chiu-Ki’s blog post from January 2012 where she resolved to be a public speaker. While I am not quite prepared to make such a resolution since I am still struggling with a tinge of imposter syndrome. I do think it might be helpful to at least outline some topics that I could talk about should I ever go out on a limb and try to speak on any regular basis.

Stuff I Could Talk About If I Wanted To Talk About Stuff

Free Culture and Open Licenses 
I did a highly educational and fulfilling stint at Question Copyyright where I was fully indoctrinated by a merry band of copyleft radicals. I actually did a lightning talk on the topic for a company gathering and (hey!) I even have a slidedeck. See below.

How To Contribute To Open Source When You Don’t Really Know How to Code

While I was lucky enough to have jumped into open source before  I realized it was supposed to be scary, I know a lot of people feel that while they are peripherally involved (via their companies or something else) that it isn’t really *for* them or that they don’t have anything to contribute. I actually have a whole blogpost on this topic and could add even more ideas to that old list.

Working With Remote Teams
I’ve worked as part of the Operations team for a very small but very geographically dispersed company for almost fours years. I think my concrete experiences and suggestions about this could be interesting to someone somewhere. No?

How Not to Contribute to Open Source 

Over the years I have witnessed and heard many horror stories about absolute fails in companies contributing to open source. I could share some worst practices and then also share some best practices and strategies for course correction.

Why Women Should Contribute to Open Source Even Though It Is Oftentimes Unpleasant 
I actually have a slidedeck for this one too since I gave this talk in 2013 at Write Speak Code to a lovely and receptive group of women.