5 reasons why programmers need a public speaking
Development
Participation in meetups and conferences is usual in IT companies, whether it comes to a small internal technology meeting or a 2-day event with dozens of speakers. It seems clear why a business needs this, but not everyone understands why developers, analysts, and project managers need public speaking. Here are 5 reasons you should think over such an activity, regardless of complex preparation and possible excitement during the process.
Knowledge systematization
Public speaking is an excellent way to collect all your information, but it’s not the only side. The audience at IT-events is quite active, so you can hope that people’s questions will highlight what you might still need to pull up and sort out and tell you in which direction to move on.
New contacts and communication with like-minded people
Of course, it applies more to conferences, but sometimes networking sessions happen at open meetups. How can good network be beneficial? Here is the obvious example: a familiar programmer can recommend you to his former place or even redirect the offer he cannot accept. One more simple fact: you’ll have somebody to ask if you have problems with the task, and GitHub keeps silent.
Building a personal brand
t will never be superfluous and will help when looking for a new job/company and requesting a raise in the current one - regardless of salary or position.
Not only are the performances themselves important here, but also the fact that you learn to present your ideas to the audience over and over again, defend your point of view, and substantiate conclusions. Are you applying for the team leader role, or are you aiming for management? Public speaking skills will definitely come in handy!
We also should add recognition in the professional community. Not everyone will reach this level, but it is worth it. Job offers, invitations to technological events, help search anything from 2000 (not 200!) contacts in Linkedin: new opportunities will appear one after another.
Opportunity to promote changes
Imagine: you master some approach, trick, library, etc., and understand that its implementation in the corporate processes would save a lot of time for other developers. If you add a comparison with existing practice to your presentation, highlighting the pros and cons of both approaches, that will be great!
Another example: the team lead had offered everybody to learn a new tool, and no one was interested, but you did it and realized from personal experience how cool it is. Now, you are ready to inspire colleagues! Tunnel thinking is a sin that sometimes even the most outstanding minds indulge in, and everyone needs a look and sometimes a “magic kick” from the outside.
Of course, public speaking is not everybody's cup of tea, and it's normal. No matter how hard they try, many people will feel uncomfortable even after the 5th or 10th speech. But if you have always wanted to try public speaking but thought it was too complicated or not very beneficial, getting involved in this adventure right now makes sense. We will tell you how to prepare for public speaking in future texts.