Flexing my Public Speaking Muscles
The best way to learn something is to teach someone else.
With this in mind, I started creating and presenting technical talks on a variety of subjects: Big Data in Healthcare, Python language features, graph algorithms, etc.
Similar to how writing about side projects on this blog helped develop my problem solving skills, throwing myself into the deep end by presenting in front of a group of people spurred me to understand my topic in a lot more depth.
This past Sunday, I gave my first conference talk. Thank you PyOhio for the opportunity. My topic was Data Science Workflows using Docker Containers.
I added a last minute wrinkle and used the Terminal to live demo my Docker workflow. It was definitely nerve-racking, but it went really well. I had more than a few people come up and thank me for clearing up some of their fuzziness re: Docker. That felt good. If I can help even one person understand, all the hours of preparation were worth it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that everyone should give a talk to their peers. It doesn't matter the size of your audience or even the topic itself, the act of preparation will make you a better programmer and help develop your communication skills.
With PyOhio wrapping up the end of my conference season, I have more time to work on side projects and write this blog. In the meantime, check out the GitHub repo of my talks.
I will post links to the recordings as soon as they are up on YouTube.
YouTube Links
Updates
- 08/01: Added link to PyOhio talk
- 08/24: Added link to ChiPy talk
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