Refactoring a tech talk abstract

Something I really enjoy doing is helping developers with their tech talk proposals. I don’t claim any special expertise at this, other than:

  1. I’ve had a pretty good acceptance record with my own talk proposals; and
  2. I’ve had years of practice writing prose—blog posts, books, screencast scripts, marketing copy—intended to engage a developer audience.

Recently I had the pleasure of looking over a talk proposal by Leena S N and making some notes on it. She has graciously given me permission to share my notes with a larger audience.

Here is a 25 minute screencast of me taking a talk proposal and offering alternative structure and wording. I’m sharing this in the form of a video because I think the important thing here isn’t the specifics of the talk, it’s the why of each change that I was able to comment on as I made them. I hope that you find something useful here for your own talk proposals.

I also, selfishly, hope that this talk gets picked up by some US conferences! I had an absolute blast chatting with Leena at RubyConf India about continuous delivery and eliminating feature branches, and I’d love to have a chance to a) see the talk and b) chat again sometime!

Want me to go over one of your talk proposals? Inquire about a Rubber Duck Session!