HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

If you want to talk at a local meet up group it's usually an informal process to introduce yourself to the organizers and pitch an idea.

If you want to speak at a larger conference you'll have to keep an ear to the ground for a "Call for Proposals" or CFP. This is a more formal process where you'll have to pitch your talk and make it through the selection process. Some conferences are more friendly to beginner speakers than others such as Pycon.

That's how I started. I've done about 5 or 6 talks now that have ranged from very small, informal talks to larger ones where I was speaking to a room of a hundred or so people. You don't have to be an expert right away or aim to be a keynote speaker. It takes practice and that might not be what success means to you anyway.

The biggest talk I did I had planned for months. I had done a lot of work and research for it. It was at Pycon in 2014 [0] iirc. I travelled with my family out to Montréal to give it. I was really, really excited: I was about to talk about procedural generation and algorithms for game design... when the night before I was to give the talk my daughter had come down with a stomach virus. My partner and I spent the night in an emergency room and I didn't get any sleep that night. I was a wreck on stage the next day. I'd cut out a bunch of content in the morning after rehearsing one more time, afraid I wouldn't be able to get through it, and when it came time to give the talk I rushed through most of it and had 10 minutes to spare at the end.

Despite how bad I felt it had gone more than a few people shook my hand after and had good things to say. A younger person there said it was the best talk they had heard all day. I'll never forget that.

I love teaching and speaking. It can be fun. But you don't have to be the best speaker to get started. You just have to put it out there and start giving talks. After a dozen or so I think I might start getting the hang of it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE2YxsHPIfA

Update added link to talk

⬐ sonabinu

Local Meet Up groups and conferences are a great way. There are some groups that have a series of small 15 min talks, where you explain how to use a particular library or optimize with some techniques. These are a great way to get started.

⬐ moomin

When I started doing talks for London Clojurians there were literally fewer speakers than speaker slots. This meant that people were pretty forgiving (it also helps that LDNCLJ are a bunch of very nice people).

Nothing builds confidence better than not being very good and the world not ending.

⬐ None

None