In early 2013, I submitted a talk to OSCON entitled “Marketing Your Tech Talent.” It was turned down, but soon after I was honored to have it accepted for Monktoberfest, where it was well received. I was amused and flattered that, as soon as I finished the talk, Laurel Ruma jumped up to congratulate me – and suggest that I submit it for OSCON. So I did, it was accepted, and I delivered the talk at OSCON 2014.

The Monktoberfest version was aimed more at tech marketing departments or individuals who need persuading that letting technical staff speak for themselves is a great way to market technical products. For the OSCON version, I spoke directly to the techies themselves, encouraging them to market themselves and their talents because “there’s no IMDB for geeks – you are responsible for your career.” The video here was done by OSCON; they don’t share all OSCON talks on their YouTube channel (they’d like you to pay for a viewing package to see them all), but they do allow individual speakers to share them ourselves.

The slides for both (in notes and non-notes versions), as well as other talks of mine, are available here.

Both conferences are fun to attend, great ways to learn a lot on many topics, and meet interesting people. As a speaker or attendee, I recommend both.