Blogging, hats, stuff

Yesterday I gave a talk at Kiberpipa on the awesome #wwwh weekly event. The talk was about this blog and how after that one insanely popular posteveryone suddenly decided I know what I'm doing and should tell others how its done.

Video at bottom

It's funny how difficult coming up with a talk is when somebody tweets you Hey, you should totally come give a talk about blogging. The problem with these kinds of talk is that you don't really know what you'll be trying to say. Every time you're up there on stage you should have a message - something to convince the audience of.

Just giving a general talk sucks for that. It invariably turns into something a bit like this post - a rambling conglomerate of sentences that sort of go together. Always reminds me of that one line in a movie: You talk a lot, but you don't say much.

I guess the overall message of my talk was this:

Patience! It takes a lot of patience and sticking-to-it-ness, don't do if it isn't inherently fun for you.

Despite all of that I think the talk was a smashing success. Sure I forgot to even mention hats - was supposed to mention changing the blog's name from Cthulhu and Other Crazies to A Geek With a Hat ... oops? In general the talk ended up a bit rambley, even finished with "Wait, there was something else I wanted to say ... oh well. Questions?"

That's not a very strong ending. The originally planned ending was: But hey, at least I'm no longer The Author on hackernews, but Swizec

All in all, rhetoric sucked, body language was attrocious, hands found their way into pockets several times, but people laughed a few times, asked a bunch of questions and I think everyone had fun. This one girl even asked for actual advice and I thank her for thinking I know enough to give advice about this stuff.

The slides for Blogging, hats, stuff are over at Speakerdeck whose embeds don't work with Wordpress ... there is also a video.