Last month Jonathan Relf spoke at Tech on Toast, our morning event, and we asked if he'd write a few words about his experience. He kindly obliged and threw in some gifs for good measure. Enjoy!
To be asked to speak at Tech On Toast in June was a great opportunity.
To have so many bright-eyed, keen and hungry people attend was a thrill.
Thankfully the sponsors, Rebel Recruitment, had the hunger covered with a selection of breakfast items and Accelerate Places provided the comfortable surroundings and drinks to satiate the differing needs of a morning talk event.
To some, the idea of attending an event at 7:30 am is an affront to their sleeping souls. For those who maybe find attending an evening event more difficult to fit in their schedule it really is a great time to pose questions and get people thinking.
When I was asked to talk I offered a couple of suggestions on topics and in true Tech Nottingham style, the solution to this problem was "why don't we have both?"
My first talk was about Elasticsearch & proposing a view that there's a line that can be walked between pure metrics and pure logs. It's a technology stack that I've been getting a lot of satisfaction from learning, using and supporting.
In the Q&A section after that, I had several attentive questions from the audience. There was no 'free beer & pizza' sluggishness about it and it was great to explore a few additional lines of enquiry.
I then gave a whistle-stop tour of how the episodes of Twine Radio, a podcast about the meetup scene in Nottingham, are created.
We heard a brief snippet of Episode 4 featuring Andrew and Emma talking about Tech Nottingham and I shared some of the tools that I use to bring it all together.
There's an energy and a buzz about Tech On Toast that's unlike other events. The fact you can cram in some knowledge sharing and networking before you've even got to work is a great plus. The were some reports that this was the busiest event so far and this momentum is set to continue as its a great format.
As a speaker, I appreciated the challenge of having to condense my talk into a shorter time slot. It made me concentrate on the heart of the message I wanted to get across. If you're presenting a talk I encourage you to see if you could deliver a shorter version; a 15 minute version; an elevator pitch even.
As Andrew often says these talks can simply be sharing experiences of something rather than having to wait to become expert in. You should get in touch with them about speaking at a future event because it really was a great experience. The quality and level of questioning I got back was more than I'd expected.
Go try Tech On Toast if you've not done so yet and you'll feel mentally invigorated for the rest of the day.
Thank you to Emma & Andrew for giving me the opportunity to speak at Tech On Toast and for those that attended for giving me great feedback and for spending your time with us sharing your energy, stories and experiences.
Now it's had its debut at Tech On Toast I've already got three other events interested in hearing the Elasticsearch talk. Get involved - share something amazing.
Thank you Jonathan! If this has whet your appetite, you can read more of Jonathan's words here.
Fancy writing a guest blog post yourself? Get in touch, we'd love to hear from you!