Last Saturday I spoke at BSides NoVA, which also happened to fall on Halloween. Speakers were allowed (encouraged?) to give their talks in costume, so naturally I couldn’t pass on such an opportunity. Way to kill two birds with one stone.
It was my second year speaking at the conference. This time around, I gave a lightning talk around ClickFix. I won’t bore you with the details, since this is a blog post around the conference, not the talk. You can read the slides here.
Tips on giving conference talks
I don’t find public speaking difficult anymore. Most of it is due to practice. Taking improv and standup comedy classes helped a lot too. Also, when I’m part of the audience, I tend to observe which conference talks I like or dislike.
As a result, I do have a few non-obvious thoughts around how to give a good talk:
Your main goal is to entertain the audience.
Talks exist to provide context and whet the audience’s appetite. Aim to have at most one takeaway from your talk. If people want to learn more and get a deep understanding, they’ll read more about a topic.
If you have one metric, optimize for audience laughter. During my talk, it felt closer to a comedy routine than an informational session. Entertaining talks are memorable talks.
It’s better for your talk to be too short than too long.
Prefer to end on a high note.
Bloating a talk just distracts from the core message. On the other hand, a shorter talk leaves more time for questions and audience interaction.
Keep the slides simple.
Nobody is gonna read your wall of text, not even you. It’s easier to have visual reminders and then ad lib it.
Humans like pictures, not boring text. You want your slides to be more interesting than their phones. That means cutting, not adding.
Don’t be nervous.
That’s easier said than done. Being a successful, handsome, and funny engineer with lots of cool friends helps a ton. I’m not intimidated by you kids anyway.
On a more serious note, nobody is judging you or paying much attention. Your talk really isn’t a big deal. You’ll be better off if you just have fun and vibe with the audience.
Honestly, practice makes perfect. Just get the reps in.
The badge challenge and picking locks
After my talk, I got to enjoy the conference itself. This year there was an electronic badge, which was a pleasant surprise. Along with the badge came a puzzle challenge.
The first part of the puzzle was a CTF. Claude worked very hard on it.
The final part of the puzzle was simply to solder the badge. Completing the CTF revealed which pins to solder. And at least today, that’s a job that AI wasn’t going to replace. The conference conveniently had soldering stations. With the wires in place, the badge lit up.
The rest of the conference was spent picking locks with friends. I suck at picking locks; if there are multiple pins, I use a rake and yolo it. But it was fun. For some odd reason, the hour of mindlessly picking locks allowed me to stop overthinking and start living in the moment.
BSides NoVA treats its speakers well. This year’s speaker goodie bag contained a mug with a cork bottom. It earned an immediate spot in my kitchen as I don’t like using coasters.
Epilogue: Halloween night
Since it was Halloween, there were a bunch of Halloween parties in DC that night. I was already socially exhausted from the conference, so a chunk of my evening was spent deliberating whether I should go party-hopping or flake. Eventually I decided that I should behave like a normal human being, so I began my drive into DC.
Driving was a mistake. Halloween night was already guaranteed to be a mess, and putting it on a Saturday compounded the chaos. As I got on the 14th Street Bridge from Arlington to DC, three firetrucks drove past me onto the bridge. Traffic ground to a halt. The firetrucks formed a blockade, forcing five lanes of traffic to merge into a single lane. They were blocking the rubble from a particularly nasty car crash. What was supposed to be a 15-minute drive took over 40 minutes.
By the time I reached Logan Circle, my problems had just begun. There was literally zero parking available. A city full of rowdy pedestrians doesn’t make it easier. Circling around the neighborhood felt more like a safari: you’re in a car watching oddly shaped animals stumble around.
Eventually I gave up; it was getting late enough that the parties were ending. Right on cue, a friend (who had just left the party I was trying to reach) texted me asking where I was. So I drove all the way back to Arlington, where we hit a bar to celebrate the start of November.