3 builders who never spoke to each other

Give the talk only you could have given

Aim the material at one specific person whose career you envy and the bar forces something personal and unlike the rest of the programme. Keep the topic open until close to the date so you speak about whatever currently has hold of you, build the reps on tiny audiences first, and do not use someone else's stage to experiment with format.

The method

1. 01

   Write a conference talk to impress one specific person whose career you envy, because that bar forces something personal, useful and unlike the rest of the programme.

2. 02

   Tell conference organisers you will decide the topic nearer the time, because the talk that lands is the one about whatever has hold of you that month.

3. 03

   Do not experiment with the format when you speak at somebody else's event; deliver what the audience turned up expecting.

4. 04

   Build speaking reps on tiny audiences first - demo a feature to your team, talk to your coworking group, run a livestream - then move up to local meetups.

What it returned

• 3,000

  Fishkin aimed his INBOUND spotlight talk at HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah, in front of a room of more than 3,000 people.

• 30

  He spent between four and eight hours producing a streamed video for Laracon Online rather than giving a 30 minute talk, the code on screen came out unreadable, and the chat turned hostile.

• He describes himself as the speaker organisers find annoying for exactly this reason, and opened the Case Conf talk on a project he had started weeks earlier

• Jason Charnes, who has general anxiety disorder, gave an unplanned lightning talk at a Rails conference, then spoke to an audience of five, and has since spoken at more than ten events across North America.

Sources

• Why geeks should speakJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Finally, let's find you some speaking opportunities · undated
• How Cultural Conditioning Biases Us to Make Bad Decisions in Our Lives, Our Work, & Our Marketing (my talk from INBOUND 2017)Rand Fishkin · sparktoro.com · 2017-09-30
• ClawdbotPeter Steinberger · steipete.me · 2026-01-02
• 2020 Year in Review - Fathom AnalyticsJack Ellis · usefathom.com · August - Viral customer & Laracon online drama · 2020-12-23