Now that I’m home, I’m glad to be back to focusing on writing.
Motivating me further: I just finished the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which has been recommended to me so many times in the past few months that I was surprised to learn it was originally published in 2002. Good if you have a creative or entrepreneurial project and need a strong push to get to work already.
Merging blog and newsletter
I’ve been debating whether or not to merge my newsletter and my blog. The fact that I feel like I should say “yes, I have both a newsletter and a blog for some reason, and they’re different,” is already a bad sign, isn’t it…
My newsletter was meant to be once-weekly content, delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribers only.
Meanwhile, my blog posts were whenever-I-felt-like-it content, delivered to whoever was watching on Substack or Medium, or checking out my website. In any given week, I might post once, a few times, or not at all. They didn’t come to you by email unless you had Substack or Medium send them to you.
But the lines between email and blog are blurry. What content belongs where? And my writing was split into two places, only one of which was hosted on my website.
I was spending a lot of extra time each week managing content distribution. I’d rather spend the time creating content.
It just makes sense for me to merge them.
Here’s the deal
Here’s how it will work going forward. I will publish all my long-form content on my website first. Starting with this post 🙂
My newsletter is set up to watch my blog for new content.
We’re going to find out what happens with photos when I include them. Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash
Current email subscribers will get a weekly digest on Thursday mornings, so it won’t look too different, although I’m still figuring out how to make the formatting look good by email. If you’d rather get email for every post instead, let me know (or check your newsletter preferences).
New email subscribers will get an email for every post, with the option to switch to the digest.
The content will be duplicated on LinkedIn, Substack, and Medium, and linked on Bluesky. (Facebook too, for now, but I’m not a fan and I may discontinue that at some point.)
Less time managing content distribution, more time to write.
Also, welcome to [checking current numbers…] 170 subscribers so far who signed up this week on LinkedIn. Glad you’re here!
And somewhere in there I also took a week-long vacation to Cape Cod, too. I was so tired when I got home from GHC…
Let’s talk about conferences!
Speakers
I found speakers (both mainstage and breakout sessions) inspiring at all three conferences.
But it’s hard to beat the legendary Gene Kim for industry connections. ETLS speakers, especially on the main stage, were jaw-droppingly good.
If I hadn’t been to the same conference in 2023 and 2024, I would have wondered after day one what the conference committee was thinking, putting all their best speakers on the same day. But no, they put their best speakers on every day of the conference.
But why go to a conference at all? You can watch great speakers online.
For me, it’s about those in-person interactions. Especially the longer and more meaningful conversations during workshops, in the hallway, and over meals.
Now, I gotta hand it to GHC for assembling 13,000+ women in tech in one space. That’s a feat.
But sheer size alone made it harder to connect. GHC employed something called Braindate, which would have addressed this problem so well if it hadn’t run into so many snags… the one Braindate session I attended at GHC was one of the highlights of my conference.
ETLS does a wonderful job of making it easy to find people over food – breakfast, lunch, and evening social events were all excellent opportunities to connect with attendees, vendors, and speakers.
And Jeff Gallimore encourages people: when you’re in a group, leave the circle a little open so new people can join. Be a croissant, not a donut!
LeadDev, by far, had the most inclusive and welcoming conference. Thought and care were given to attendees’ needs. And I love the idea of speaker office hours – way more friendly than a few rushed minutes at the end of a presentation to call out questions. I’m hoping I introduced the croissant to LeadDev!
GHC knocks it out of the park for speaker diversity, but LeadDev also did very well in that category.
Winners: ETLS and LeadDev, tied. I felt like I was joining a community of friends at both.
Gene Kim at ETLS. Photo from ITRevolution.com.
Venue and Food
This must be the third hardest problem in computer science, after cache invalidation and naming things.
ETLS: Good hotel, good conference space… but, ugh… Vegas. Not my favorite place. I walked 20 minutes to a drugstore to buy spring water because I won’t pay $8/bottle for it. But the conference provided breakfast and lunch daily, as well as “heavy appetizers” in the evenings. The food options, both at the conference itself and near the conference, were the best of the three. Maybe that’s why the tickets were so expensive…
LeadDev: Conference space seemed a bit small for the need, but the North Javits Center was probably the nicest space of the three. No hotel was close to the conference center, though. The speaker hotel gave me a room the size of a postage stamp, but it had a drugstore across the street, which was great. NYC is overwhelming. But at least it’s close to home for me? Lunch was provided, but otherwise, food options were on your own in NYC, with nothing especially near the conference center. I ate at the hotel diner more than I’d have liked.
GHC: I spent a minor fortune staying at the hotel onsite, but it was by far the best hotel of the three. Chicago’s my favorite city of the three, and it was easy enough for me to get to. But holy cannoli, enormous venue, and you can only get from floor to floor by escalator. They had spring water onsite, but food, and even coffee, was from the conference center vendors, and there was a line everywhere you went. This made it hard to connect with people over food or even to eat at all between sessions. At least I could get grocery delivery to my hotel, unlike Vegas. And the restaurant/bar at the hotel had good food for dinner.
Winner: Ehh. Nobody!
My resting heart rate is always a few bpm higher during a conference. Here’s last week, with Grace Hopper Celebration in the purple box.
What will I do next year?
If all three conferences overlap, which would I choose?
If I take speaking out of the picture, probably ETLS, although LeadDev would be very tough to pass up. Maybe I’ll stay at a different hotel for LeadDev.
If I speak… that puts GHC back in the running. GHC won’t put me on the main stage at this point in my speaking career, but I’d like to experience that conference as a speaker. That would help, I think, with making connections.
That said, the speaker experience was the best at LeadDev.
I’m just going to hope that they aren’t three conferences in one week next year!
And furthermore…
Also on my radar: Fast Flow Conf. Which overlapped with LeadDev this year, so I’m probably doomed for 2026…
What conferences do you go to? Why do you like going there in person?
I’m a writer at heart, so enjoying speaking at conferences is a bit of a surprise for me.
Speaking at LeadDev StaffPlus went even better than I was hoping, and it’s got me thinking about what works for me as a speaker.
This was a bigger audience than when I spoke at Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit in 2024, and I actually felt more comfortable.
I had some signs while I was speaking that the talk was landing, like a gasp from the audience when I revealed a surprise. And I got kind comments and great questions from people who approached me afterwards.
I know the cheerleading from the conference organizers and my fellow presenters helped. Such a supportive group!
Group photo with other StaffPlus speakers. Photo from LeadDev
I’m also starting to settle on an approach to speaking that works for me as a writer.
What to speak about
Deciding what to speak about is the first hard part. For me, it’s about identifying a story from my life that illustrates a point relevant to my audience.
Let me break that down:
A story – there are great presentations that don’t involve storytelling, but putting the story front and center helps me connect with the audience.
From my life – if I’m talking about my own experience, it’s easier for me to remember the details. And nobody in the audience will challenge me on the facts!
Illustrates a point – yes, but the point I wind up making may not be the point I originally planned. The process of crafting the talk often leads me to a new place.
Relevant to my audience – I’ve got plenty of stories, but not all of them are meaningful for that audience and context.
From there, I’ll start either with the end of the story or with the moment of transition.
Where do I want to end up?
If I start with the end, I have a few considerations:
What’s the main takeaway?
In the case of my LeadDev talk, I wanted people to have a sense of when a conflict might not be theirs to resolve and when it might be time to focus on something else.
How do I want them to feel after the talk?
I like my audience to feel seen. I want them to feel like the talk went to a deeper place than they might have been expecting.
That was especially true on the StaffPlus stage, because I was third on the program. I wanted to help create a sense of “this conference isn’t esoteric, it is relevant to me.”
Moment of transition
Stories are best, I think, when the storyteller emerges changed by the experience. Something like “this happened and now I see things differently” beats “this happened but otherwise everything’s still the same.”
The moment where things change is a great place to deep dive for a few seconds to make the moment more vivid. Add detail. Slow down a bit to let that moment play out. Bring the audience along for the transition.
When I got to this moment for LeadDev, I just let myself go off script and relive a little of the emotion. I let there be some unfinished sentences.
Where to start the story?
This is a Matthew Dicks storytelling tip: the story starts with the opposite of where it ends.
My story at StaffPlus ends with my realizing that the conflict I was describing was not mine to handle. Therefore, it starts in a moment where I was determined that I was going to handle it.
The first few lines (and the last few) are the only sentences I outright memorize. This is a Moth Radio Hour storytelling tip from their book How to Tell a Story.
I want my opening section to do several things:
Start strong. No “so” at the beginning.
Acknowledge my welcome. “Thank you” is good.
Get the attention of the audience. More on a “hook” shortly.
Introduce myself. Specifically, why should the audience listen to me. Quick recap of my credentials.
Bring people into a moment, with some details.
Introduce the stakes. Why should anyone care about this story?
Hook?
I heard a Rory Vaden podcast recently where he explores what a “hook” is.
People say you should do three things during a talk:
Tell people what you’re about to tell them
Tell them
Tell them what you just told them
I’ve also heard this called bad advice, and it might be, if you’re interpreting this as just repeating yourself three times. That’s not how I interpret it.
At the top of this section, I told you what I was about to tell you (“what a ‘hook’ is.”) I haven’t actually said what a hook is yet. I just told you what to expect from this section.
And that is the hook: it’s the first “tell people what you’re about to tell them.” You aren’t giving all the info away the first time. You’re just letting people know the plan.
I did this in my talk right here:
The hook.
Then you can execute the plan (“tell them”) and at the end, recap the takeaways (“tell them what you just told them”).
Once I saw how “tell them what you’re about to tell them” can be the hook, I can’t unsee it.
A map, and no notes
Once I know where I’m starting, my transition, and where I’m ending, I have a map of sorts for how I want to get there. What points do I want to visit along the way?
I don’t bother with speaker notes, for the most part.
I’ve got my opening line and closing line memorized.
I know my story path to get from A to B to C.
I’ve practiced enough to have learned some key phrases I will pull out along the way.
I don’t want it to sound like I’m reading. So I don’t read.
I practice to find out where I get lost. I also sneak clues into my slides to make sure I always know what’s next.
For example: I had several slides in a row with multiple bullet points. I needed to know when I was on the last bullet point, so that I could change my intonation to match. But the number of bullets varied from slide to slide. Solution: the last bullet on each slide starts with “and.”
The only speaker note I had at LeadDev was on one of the last slides: “If you have at least 2 minutes remaining, you’re on time.” It’s an early warning if I’m running over, and it lets me relax if I am on time.
Slides
I try to put as little text as possible on the slides. Text should be close to what I’m saying, but not necessarily exactly (I don’t want to read my slides to the audience). Text should reinforce key points.
I do a lot of animation, mostly making bullet points appear as I talk. Ideally, they appear just after I’ve said them.
I don’t want my audience reading ahead, so I don’t give them any way to do that. I want them curious and listening to me.
But it’s also good for them to have some info on the screen in case they space out for a moment. Notes let them get caught up.
This time, I also discovered the joy of the “replay” animation for drawing. I drew an org chart and then drew some annotations… The end result looked like this:
It all made sense with the narrative.
Closing
The closing section has several jobs:
End strong. No “anyway, so… that’s all I have, I guess…”
Recap the takeaway(s)
Call to action. What do I want them to do? At LeadDev, it was “find me here, and find me on beyond writing code dot com.”
Another thank you. Gratitude’s nice. It also lets the audience know the talk is over.
I used to put the “thank you” at the top of my last slide. Now I don’t, because I don’t want to signal that I’m done until I’ve said everything.
You might be able to get away without a signal that you’re done if you have a really strong and decisive ending, and you slow down a lot to deliver. Maybe something like this:
“And that… is why you should never… get into a pie-eating contest… with the Dalai Lama.”
Rehearsing
I practice standing up, out loud, with a “clicker” in my hand to advance the slides.
I listen for where I forget what’s next, where I stumble over the words, and where I get sidetracked. Places where I say “and—” only to switch slides and discover that the next slide needs a “but,” not an “and.”
After I rehearse, I think: what were the best moments of this talk as it stands now? Get rid of other moments as much as possible. Keep only those that are required to tell the story.
I make notes of any phrasing I like, and then I’ll try to rehearse using that phrasing.
Rehearsing for an audience is useful, even better if they can give me feedback about what was strong, what wasn’t, and how I can improve.
Presentation time
I did some walking shortly before I was due on stage. That helped me burn some excess nervous energy.
I gave myself a few presentation-time reminders:
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. If I rush, I mess up, and messing up makes me slower.
Breathe. I practiced this while rehearsing, and noticed the difference it made.
Look out at people.
Don’t get clever. No improvising, adding content, or going off script.
Have some energy. Try to sound as if you were saying it all for the first time. Like you just now thought of it.
With this plan, I feel surprisingly comfortable on stage. Here I am, a writer enjoying speaking. Who knew?
I’ve used my writing skills to craft the story from start to finish. I have a story from my own life, so I know what I need to talk about. And I have the slides to help reinforce my points and keep me from getting stuck.
And that… is why you should never… get into a pie-eating contest… with the Dalai Lama.
The book isn’t out until October, but I have a few sample chapters of the ebook because I’m on IT Revolution’s mailing list. And I realized that, despite my current dread of all things AI-related, I should read those sample chapters before attending the seminar.
Wow, y’all. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like I was hanging on every word of a book. This is one of those books.
I’ve already added it to my list of books I recommend. And I have a whole list of people, developers and non-developers alike, who I think would enjoy it. (I may be able to get you a discount. More about that later.)
Skeptical of vibe coding? I sure was, and to some extent still am. Gene and Steve were, too.
But they are clearly converts, and the book is getting me to rethink my initial impressions.
Addressing concerns
Yes, there are serious concerns about writing “real” production code with vibe coding, where you’re not really delving into the code output.
Is the coding process itself safe?
Is the code it generates secure, maintainable, and extendable?
If you don’t understand or even look at the code, how can you be sure there isn’t some terrible problem lurking that will cause major problems once it’s in production? Okay, you can never be sure of that, but it seems so much worse if you don’t fully understand the code.
It’s clear that the authors of this book are grappling with these same concerns. The chapters where they talk about how to approach vibe coding for better results are still ahead, and not part of the sneak preview! Argh, cliffhanger! 🙂
Magic and hope
One of my early takeaways isn’t directly related to vibe coding at all: I finally understood why, after 20 years as a developer, I just didn’t want to write code anymore. The tedious parts have started to outweigh the magic. If you’re feeling that way, too, you’re not alone.
Vibe coding may be a way for developers to rediscover that magic. It may also be an opportunity for people not trained as developers to discover it too, and to create new software directly.
The book also gives me hope that the role of the developer, even the junior developer, isn’t disappearing. Changing, yes, that’s inevitable. But they point to other historical moments where people feared the end of our profession, and those moments turned out to be times of growth.
Learning more
My thoughts these days are all about the role of humanity for software developers, so I’m interested to see what I’ll learn from Gene and Steve’s session and the conference itself. I’ll report back on my mailing list after the conference.
Does this Vibe Coding book sound like a good read to you, too? Want 15% off a paperback copy?
If there’s interest, I will coordinate a bulk order for 15% off for folks on my mailing list. Email me or message me on LinkedIn by 9/28 to let me know if you’re interested.
Join the mailing list below so you don’t miss a thing!
My first conference in person was incredible. More later about the content — here’s what I learned from the experience of attending.
First… ever?
It’s true. I’ve been in tech for 25+ years, and yet DevOps Enterprise Summit 2023 in Las Vegas was my first in-person conference.
DevOps Enterprise Summit 2023 main stage. Photo by me.
I worked for many years at a company with proprietary everything. The closest we had to a “conference” was the occasional meeting in the company auditorium. You drive 20 minutes, everyone there is also from your company, there’s an hour or three of presentations, you grab lunch with your team from the cafeteria… it’s just not the same.
When I started to work with more mainstream tech, I did come closer to the conference experience. I traveled to a nearby Google Cloud event, for example, although that was more of a sales pitch than a conference (the food was great though). I attended ng-conf, too, but only virtually.
And then I switched companies… and then there was a pandemic. I went to a few more virtual conferences, including the 2022 virtual DevOps Enterprise Summit. Still nothing in person.
Expectations
I did know a little of what to expect in person. The virtual conference gave me some idea, and the people I met through that spoke glowingly about the community that sprung up around this specific conference. I was definitely not disappointed.
When I was younger, I worked in a nuclear medicine research lab (like one does). The researchers would attend Society of Nuclear Medicine conferences. They returned with stories to tell — usually about what each vendor sponsored for dinner.
A few years later, when I was a newbie network admin, colleagues and friends of mine would go to NANOG or to LISA. I never did attend either, but I learned from friends that post-conference blues are a thing.
Still, that’s not much, so I did some research online prior to attending. What to expect? What to bring? What to do? It’s hard to know what advice will be applicable, but here’s what I ultimately found helpful.
Logistics
Getting there: direct + rideshare
If you can get a direct flight, do that. I had to leave my house at 4am, which I regretted — briefly. But once I was boarding that plane, I didn’t regret that decision at all.
I took an Uber to the airport (I live near a big city, which increases my odds of getting an Uber at 4am) and from airport to hotel and back. Cheaper than airport parking, cheaper than shuttle parking + ticket, about on par with a taxi, no messing around with public transit.
Where to stay: in the conference hotel
I did, and it made things so much simpler. Fewer concerns about weather, how long it takes to get somewhere, or being out after dark. A few people online said that they liked staying elsewhere as a sort of retreat from the conference, but that didn’t seem necessary to me. My hotel room was surprisingly quiet.
What to eat: yeah, about that…
I actually started out imagining that I was going to go to Target before the conference to pick myself up some food so I would have something in the room for breakfast. Fortunately, before I even got to Vegas, I realized that there was no way I would be doing any such thing. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I even considered it.
That said, we weren’t sure what meals would be provided at the conference. It turned out: all of them, for the three main days of the conference. I went to the breakfasts and lunches, but not the dinners.
See, we didn’t know there would be dinners. We assumed not (hey, this wasn’t the Society of Nuclear Medicine, no doctors to impress). We were wrong on day one, but we assumed that was a one-time thing. We were wrong again on day two, but surely, we thought, by day three, people were filtering out and there certainly wouldn’t be another evening event with food… wrong again.
The hotel restaurants were all surprisingly good, though.
What I brought
What to wear: flexible and comfortable
It’s a tech conference, and I wasn’t presenting, so I didn’t feel a need to dress up. The best advice I read: bring a jacket, because it can get chilly, and wear comfortable shoes, because you’re on your feet a lot.
Beyond that, I had a uniform of sorts — short sleeved merino shirts, hiking pants or a skirt. My advice: wear what you feel comfortable and confident in. I didn’t check a bag, so I kept it lightweight and compact.
Specifics: Coolibar Sprinter Sport Jacket, in black: it’s no blazer, but it was so lightweight and the pockets zip closed. Coolibar Sanibel Everyday Beach Shawl worked as a scarf, as a wrap, and as a blanket on the plane. Icebreaker merino Tech Lite II shirts, Prana hiking pants, and RipSkirt Hawaii skirts — super comfortable skirts with pockets I can put my phone in with no bulge. That’s some magic right there.
What to bring: I traveled light
I brought my personal laptop, and I hardly used it. I took notes with a pen in a notebook (Pigma Micron 05, Moleskine dotted page, not that you asked). I’d only bring a laptop again if I absolutely had to for work. Otherwise, there’s a computer in my pocket, what do I need a laptop for…
I brought a small reusable bottle for water, but not soap to wash it, so that was pointless. Bottled water was eight bucks from the hotel store, so instead I got a large herbal tea each morning and refilled the cup with water throughout the day.
I brought a slim day pack as my “personal item”, and that was perfect for toting whatever I wanted with me that wouldn’t fit in my pockets (like the notebook and the scarf).
I went through a pack of gum surprisingly fast and bought breath freshening strips at the hotel store when I ran out. Earplugs got used — my hotel room was quiet, but my travel CPAP machine is not. I wore compression socks on the plane, it’s hard to tell if they helped.
The internet said to bring business cards; I did not, and I didn’t need them. The hotel had a pool and a gym, but I brought neither a swimsuit or workout clothes, and I didn’t regret it. I didn’t bring anything “dressy” for going out, and that was also fine.
Given that I wasn’t checking a bag, I declined most of the freebies (socks were “in”). I did bring home signed books, a conference T-shirt and bag, and a bunch of stickers. I was pretty pleased that I could fit four books in my carry on!
What I did
Choosing sessions: I overdid it
I didn’t want to miss a moment, so I attended as many sessions as I possibly could. This was probably not a great idea. It would have been healthy for me to skip a session every now and then to just give my poor brain a break! All of them were recorded (see https://videos.itrevolution.com/), so there was no need to try to cram.
Vegas things: I didn’t
I’ve been to Vegas once before. It’s not my favorite. I felt like I’d done that tourist thing once, and I didn’t have any interest in doing that again. I didn’t do any sightseeing. I didn’t go to any shows. I walked through the hotel casino, but I didn’t do any gambling.
The only “gambling” I did was finding an Art-o-Mat machine which didn’t have a placard in one of the spots. I put my $5 in and actually got some art from an artist whose work I’d seen online before. I call that a win.
That said… I also didn’t leave the hotel for five days. I discovered when I got home on Friday night that the last time I’d been outside, not under a roof, was when I was waiting for that Uber at 4am on Monday morning. Ooops. That part wasn’t necessarily a good idea.
Meeting people: do this, not that
Best moment in meeting people was when I simply walked up to a group that seemed to be talking and laughing amongst themselves, and asked if I could join them. They were friendly indeed, and I wound up with a few new contacts. They explained about the “doughnut” (a closed circle of people, not welcoming newcomers) vs. the “croissant” (an open C shape, more welcoming of newcomers) and we made sure we were still in croissant formation after I joined.
Worst moment in meeting people was when I decided not to be put off by the unwelcoming vibe at one of the lunch tables. I plunked myself down anyway, followed by a colleague. Well. My colleague and I ended up spending the time talking to each other, because my initial read on that table was spot on. I did my best nodding and smiling in a friendly sort of way to the rest of the table, and nobody was having it. Hey, not a problem, not everyone needs to be social with new people all the time. Just saying that, if I’m looking to meet new people, I’m going to trust my instinct about the group I’m approaching.
(Second worst moment — if only because it was much shorter — was the guy in the casino who stumbled drunkenly towards me, beer bottle in hand, as I was going to get coffee at five in the morning. He gave me a slurred “how you doin’,” and I simply walked around him. Ah, five in the morning in Vegas.)
Also, something new I learned: when I’m tired, I tell stories with the history of the entire universe as a backstory. It certainly keeps the conversation going (and going, and going…) but it doesn’t let the other person get a word in edgewise! Let the other person know who you are, sure, but you also want to know who they are. Sorry Dave Stanke! 😂
Speaking of which, this post has already gotten much longer than I planned…
Looking forward to future posts to tell you more about the conference itself. And I’m definitely looking forward to being a conference-attending veteran at DOES 2024!
