It was an afternoon in September, & I was having a discussion with [Hari](https://in.linkedin.com/in/sp2hari). While talking, he gave me a new task, ***Talking***. This is a screenshot of what we wrote in a document. In the next 6 months, I had to first attend a conference, & then give one external tech talk.

\
 ![](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/ifDiukLaCGVkd6C6aAyQ93quDOc2-2023-01-30T23:35:47.930Z-cldjg8kws00040as6fevd2258)

Being my first time doing one, the prospect of presenting a Tech Talk was both exciting and scary.

\
Now that I had to give a talk, the most important thing was to find a conference. Since I had been working on Ruby on Rails, the idea was to find a Ruby-related conference and submit the CFP there.

\
In November, I came across the [Ruby on Rails Global Summit by Geekle](https://events.geekle.us/ruby/). I intended to attend this summit, observe the speakers' presentations, and then submit a CFP for any upcoming Ruby conferences I could find. The CFPs were still open though.

\
I told my idea to Hari, and he convinced me that since the CFPs are open, I should submit one, & if I don't get selected, I can always come back to attend the summit. This way, my plan of attending the summit was now changed to speaking at the summit.

\
 ![](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/ifDiukLaCGVkd6C6aAyQ93quDOc2-2023-01-30T23:35:47.936Z-cldjg8kww00050as6ftfu6uj4)

## Submitting the CFP

Since the CFPs had been open for some time, many of the topics I was thinking to speak on were already taken. I finally decided to speak on Rubocop, since I had been working on it for some time.

\
The plan was to show a live demo on modifying cops & showing the before & after results. After various iterations on the abstract & title, I finally submitted my first ever CFP - ***Enhancing Code Quality with Rubocop***.

\
During mid-December, [Liliya](https://www.linkedin.com/in/liliya-kravchak-975a09206/) from the [Geekle](https://www.linkedin.com/company/geekle-us/) team reached out, & yes the CFP was accepted; I was now giving my very first Tech Talk.

## Preparing for the Talk

Since the talk was in January, I was pretty chilled out when I received the acceptance. I had already written a [blog](https://blog.shlokashah.com/configuring-rubocop-in-code-base) on Rubocop, so I felt that I could manage the talk.

\
When I got another email with information on the platform we would be utilizing and promotional banners for my talk, that's when I started to freak out as I realized the scale of the conference. To make sure everything was set up, I was requested to schedule a test call with the technical team.

\
During the technical call, they walked me through the Streamyard platform, how screen sharing works, and all other minor details.

\
When the call was over, that's when I first felt tense. I started overthinking even simple things like screen sharing because I was so new to the platform. What if I share the wrong screen or my internet goes out?

\
Furthermore, I had to code live in front of my audience. What happens if my code malfunctions? I began to wonder if I ought to have recorded the presentation beforehand and submitted it. But it was time to push past your comfort level.

\
To avoid any problems that might arise during the discussion, the idea was to prepare the slides and run through the full flow as many times as I could. Also, to get an idea of how people usually do it, I went to YouTube & watched various talks given by developers I had heard of.

## Practicing the Talk

Once I had the talk ready, I practiced them & that is when I realized I needed to restructure the slides. Since I had a combination of theory & code, I had to make sure there was proper spacing between the two, so that the content was easy to consume.

\
I reordered and practiced again. I realized the speed at which I was talking was too fast & need to slow down.

\
I showed Hari a demo of my talk two days before the event, and he offered me revisions as feedback. This was quite helpful. The most significant piece of advice I received was to interact with the audience & make the talk more engaging.

\
I began to consider ways to include audience participation in the presentation. The options for participation were restricted because it was an online conference, and nobody's video would be turned on.

\
As a result, I incorporated surveys in the form of QR codes and invited the audience to participate in the coding.

\
Once I had the final slides, I did a final demo talk with [Ishan](https://linkedin.com/in/ishandeveloper) & again with Hari. Giving demo's helped in boosting my confidence.

\
On the day of the talk, I played around with the commands & the code two or three times to make sure that everything was running as expected.

## Going Live

All the nervousness vanished as soon as I began to speak because I became absorbed.

\
During the talk, I wasn't able to see whether people were answering my questions or the poll but when I completed the talk & checked, I was happy to see that the audience engaged with me & answered the polls.

\
Some people even reached out on LinkedIn with positive comments.

\
Overall, it was a fantastic experience, & I am glad I went live instead of pre-recording.

\
***PS: You can find my talk below :)***

[https://youtu.be/H7ggpT_ZFIQ?embedable=true](https://youtu.be/H7ggpT_ZFIQ?embedable=true)

***Also published [here.](https://blog.shlokashah.com/my-first-tech-talk)***

\


Too Long; Didn't Read

Cassandra Forward a free Cassandra-focused community event

My First Tech Talk: How I Prepared and How I Got Through It

Too Long; Didn't Read

@shlokashah

RELATED STORIES