Following the previous blog post about our software engineering team culture that I wrote with my colleague Andrew Harmel-Law, I spoke about the subject at the January Drupal Show & Tell last night.
I’ve been meaning to speak at a meetup for a long time, and if I hadn’t done it last night, I’d probably be putting it as one of my objectives for the year. The trouble was, I could never think of what to say. But conversations turned to tweets turned to blog posts, and it felt right to talk about this subject, particularly given that one of the themes of the blog post is the importance of communication between people.
I’d been to the Drupal Show & Tell meetup a couple of times before, and it’s a friendly group with some familiar faces, so when I saw the call for speakers, it seemed the ideal opportunity for my first venture into public speaking.
As I rode my bike through the snow to the meetup, I was a little worried that the attendance might be a little sparse, and my blocked nose wasn’t helping my confidence. After a few anxious moments where we thought there might be more speakers than people in the audience, more people arrived, and we got started, with interesting and thought-provoking talks from Anthony Seale and Nigel Milligan.
Finally, it was my turn, and despite losing my thread once or twice, I think it went fairly well for a first attempt. As I mentioned in the talk, one of the key points is about improving through iteration - I’ll be tweaking the talk and delivering a new version of it at one of our internal lightning talks sessions soon.
My slides for the talk are available online, and I’ve embedded them below. Thanks to Cameron & Wilding for organising the meetup, and to everyone who came along.
