Alain Chautard is an Expert trainer and GDE. He joins the show to talk about being a tech speaker and attending conferences. They also dive into its benefits, expectations when attending conferences, the process of being a speaker, and many more!

Lucas Paganini:

Hello, welcome back to Adventures in Angular, the podcast where we keep you updated on all things Angular related. This show is produced by two awesome companies, Top End Devs and Unvoid. Top End Devs is where we create top end devs who get top end pay and recognition while working on interesting problems and making meaningful community contributions. And Unvoid, which offers remote design and web development services with specialization in Angular, for companies that truly care about quality. In today's episode, we will talk about tech conferences. How is the attendee experience? What is it like to go to a conference? What should you expect? What are the benefits of attending tech conferences? And what if you wanna speak? How is the process to be a speaker? What is expected of you? What is paid by the event organizers and what comes out of your own pocket? What are the benefits of speaking at tech conferences? My name is Lucas Paganini. I am the CEO of Unvoid and your host in the podcast. Joining me in today's episode is my lovely co-host, Subrata Misha.

 

Subrat:

Hey everyone.

 

Lucas Paganini:

and our guest again, because he was already here in a previous episode, which was awesome, talking about how to become a Google Developer Expert. Here we have Alain Chatou.

 

Alain Chautard:

Hello, how are you?

 

Lucas Paganini:

So I'm glad to have you two here. So, Alain, I am aware that you have spoken at several conferences in the past. So, and I don't know, but I imagine that you have attended conferences too. So I think you can give us a really good view of your own experience of what you think about how is it like from both sides, right? So... Maybe we can get started from the attendee experience since I think that's the one that most people are gonna be interested in. What, how is it like? And most importantly, why should I attend tech conferences?

 

Alain Chautard:

Exactly. So thinking about what a conference is, if you've never been to a tech conference, in a sense, it's a little bit like you're going to watch a movie, but the movie is focused on tech topics, right? So you're going to see all of the best speakers in the industry, or at least most of them, and they're going to be talking about topics that you are interested in. The great thing about this is that at this conference, you will hear from people who know a lot about stuff that you work with every day, and you will learn something. I've never been to a conference where I would get nothing out of it. I always get tips and tricks. That's 100% guaranteed that you learn something from one or more speakers, because usually A conference is going to be one day, two days, up to three days at times, sometimes even more if they do workshops before or after. So it could be quite long and quite intense because it just, you know, talk after talk after talk after talk. So yeah, you're going to learn something out of it. And so that's the part where you just, you know, sit down, listen to content. assimilate stuff, take notes, and learn new things, which is the part that is the most natural to think about when we think conferences. But there's a lot more going on at conferences because the thing is these events usually have a few hundreds to a few thousands of attendees, right? And because there are so many tech people going to one place, what's gonna happen usually is that you have companies that sponsor. the conference. And these companies, they go there usually for two reasons. Either they have a product that they want to show you and they want the attendees to be aware of it, which sometimes is also a way to learn about something new. For instance, we're an Angular podcast here. So you might learn about a new component library for Angular or a new grid implementation for Angular, or just a new company that does Angular stuff that you didn't know about. So the sponsors give a lot of, they also give stuff away. So if you like swag, t-shirts, mugs, stickers, all of that, you'll get tons of them. But yeah, these companies either show their services, and sometimes they sponsor the conference because they are hiring. And they know that. People who go to conferences are usually people who want to learn new things, who are involved in their career, who want to make progress and climb the ladder. So it's a great place for companies to recruit people. So if you're looking for opportunities, going to a conference could be a very good idea because you are going to meet people and companies who are hiring. That's almost guaranteed. At any conference, you see that kind of thing happen. So that's kind of the broad spectrum of the benefits you can expect, really. And the other aspect that I didn't mention, even though I said there would be hundreds or thousands of people, is networking, of course. So if you're an introvert, you can It's more tricky and many people in tech are introverts. So it's very often at lunches and dinner, people kind of sit alone at their own table and don't try to interact too much. But if you want to connect with lots of people, that's the best possible way to do it because you have all of these people with the same mindset about the technology. They are all developers or managers or... They just want to learn that technology and get better at it. So it's a great way to connect with lots of people who have the same ideas, the same mindset, the same vision, work on the same thing, basically. So yeah, that's a broad picture I can paint for attending two conferences. Do you guys see anything that I missed or anything else to add?

 

Subrat:

Awesome food.

 

Alain Chautard:

Sometimes.

 

Subrat:

Yeah, sometimes like if you go to a different country or different location, you might get some cuisines of that location and that is that is good.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Yeah, I don't have anything to add to that list, but I would like to play Bad Cop and kind of criticize some of them so that we can really... Because I think a lot of people are going to be listening to this and they're going to be a bit skeptical about some of those benefits, so I'm going to play... their role and ask some questions until we try to break it down into the reality of how is it like the experience. So, for example, one thing that I really liked that you mentioned was that you learn about the speakers.

 

Alain Chautard:

Mm-hmm.

 

Lucas Paganini:

And that's interesting because I think one of the most common misconceptions about the experience is that you go there to like experience implicitly to learn a new technology or something. But I don't think that's the most productive way to learn a new technology. Like if you really, if I want to learn a new technology, I wouldn't go to a conference to do it. First, because I would have to wait for the conference to happen. And then by the time it happens, then I will have already lost the timing of why I wanted to learn the technology in the first place. And maybe it's just not gonna go. into the parts of the technology that I really want to go. So the most productive way that I see to learn a new tech is to actually go through the docs of that particular technology, or maybe just look on tutorials on the internet or blog posts, but I wouldn't necessarily go to a tech conference to learn about a new technology. But then you said you go there to learn about... the speaker that is talking about that technology. And I think that's really interesting, but I would like to know how much people can actually expect that, because I'm guessing that this really is a ratio, and I think that a lot of speakers may not be able to give a lot of individual or particular tips and tricks. A lot of them may be speakers that are starting out. they can maybe not be too personal and think that this is a good thing, but then it ends up, they end up delivering an information that people could get somewhere else. So they

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah.

 

Lucas Paganini:

lose the aspect of knowing how the speaker would do things differently. So what can people actually expect in that point of getting to know the speaker and how the speaker would do things?

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, these are very good points. So the first one, you said, if I want to learn something from scratch, a conference doesn't seem to be the best idea. I agree with that. If you're just starting with Angular, going to an Angular conference is probably going to be overwhelming, because a lot of stuff is going to be thrown at you, and you have no idea what it is. So that's probably too much. That said. If you started learning on your own and you have a few weeks or months of experience, of trying to learn and getting some pieces together and starting coding with the technology, then going to a conference is going to be perfect because the picture is going to, everything's going to start clicking, right? You'll see a lot more examples, a lot more APIs, and you will see things really click and come together. Another thing about going to conferences is that it's a great way to stay up to date with the technology. Because not everyone is going to be reading blogs about what's going on with Angular, or, you know, following the Angular team on a daily basis, watching YouTube videos and such. Whereas a conference is a way to say, OK, I have these two or three days aside to do just that. And I do it once a year, for instance. That way, once a year, you go to your Angular conference of choice, you get fully up to date, you're basically back on track. And what I really see at every single conference that I go is that when people go back home, they're just excited. They want to code more because they learn tips and tricks, and they just want to use them now. They feel like they have this new knowledge that they want to make use of. So I agree with the beginner part. It's not the best thing to do if you're already 100% new, but if you have a little bit of experience, if you try it on your own for at least a few weeks, then a conference is gonna be very, very helpful. And it can be really super impressive what you get out of it. The second part of your question was the speakers. How do you get the maximum out of the speakers, I would say? The first thing, especially in tech conferences, is that most of the speakers are accessible. You can really, after they're done with their talks, they're going to become attendees, basically. They're going to be with the crowd, and you can basically meet them anywhere where the conference happens. Conferences are usually in a hotel or a conference center. and the speakers stay at that same hotel or same place. So they are always around, they're always in the area. And in between the talks, during the breaks, you'll see them talk to people and basically socialize around. So it's very easy to go and meet them and most of them are very open to that. The other thing that conferences do, and I'm gonna mention the ng-conf, I have to because it's just the best Angular conference there is. If you go to ng-conf, they actually have a lunch with the speakers. So you can go, and there is one table for each speaker. You can go and have lunch with one or several speakers if you want. You can just go to a table and then move to another one and basically ask any questions that you want. So it's kind of an ask me anything format. And several conferences do that, not necessarily as a lunch or dinner. Sometimes it's just a Q&A panel that is going to be in a specific room. You can go and meet, let's say five or six speakers, ask them questions and everything. This is always very, very popular. A lot of people go there because it's really the official opportunity to go and talk to a speaker. If the speaker is there, basically they expect questions, right? They are open to. interacting and everything so you know that you're not going to be bothering them, I would say. It's safe to go and ask questions, that's the thing. So yeah, that's really the important part. The other thing about the learning or the getting information from speakers is that every time I go to a conference, I have no idea what I'm going to learn. And sometimes I go to a talk because the topic seems to be interesting to me. And then I'm going to realize that 95% of what the speaker says, I already know. So it's not that interesting, but I'm always going to pick something anyways. Sometimes they're going to be using a plugin in their ID that I didn't know about. Sometimes I just have some, a terminal with some customization that I like. There's always something new that I see and that I can pick from a talk. Also, because I'm a speaker as well, sometimes I like the examples that they use. I can get some tips and tricks from the speaker itself from a technical standpoint, in a sense, how to do good public speaking. But that's a slightly different topic. Does that answer your concern or question around speakers? Or is there anything else to add?

 

Lucas Paganini:

It does, it does. And I really like that you brought up the point of the chance of talking to speakers outside of their speaking time, because that is really something that people won't be able to have if they don't attend to the conference. Like, even the actual speech is something that a lot of conferences are going to put up on YouTube for free, or maybe not right after it ends, but a while after it's going to go. into YouTube somehow, but you really don't have this opportunity of getting to the speaker afterwards and asking this person exactly what you would like to know. So if you don't find your answer during the speaking time, then you can still look for it afterwards when the person is in the crowd or... even better when it's the moment of actually making questions to the speaker. So that's really, really interesting. How about the recruiters? So how... I understand that there will be recruiters in those conferences, but how much is that really impactful? Like, could it be into a point where you say... If you go to like five conferences, you're probably getting a job offer because I don't know like how many recruiters can you expect to find there? What is the chance of you finding your new job in a conference?

 

Alain Chautard:

So I would say from my experience, there's always at least one company that's out there just for that purpose of recruiting. And when the company does this, it's not like an agency or anything. Most of the time it would be a bank, an insurance company, meaning they want to hire their own developer. They're not trying to hire someone that they're gonna contract out to somebody else. they're really looking to build their own team and they put a lot of investment into it, right? They have to pay for a booth at the conference, they have to pay for swag. It's probably several thousands of dollars just to do this. So they are very serious about hiring people. That's for sure. If you go to a conference that is really your thing, so let's say you're an Angular person, you're going to an Angular conference, you have lots of experience with Angular, you're looking for a new job, I would say it's very likely that you're gonna be able to find something and at least get into an interview for sure. Yeah, because the thing is, even if they go there, there's not hundreds of people looking for a new job at any time, right? It might be just a small subset, maybe one, two, let's say 5% to make it bigger, but still, yeah. I think it's very, very likely that, because the thing is, they're looking for Angular people. They know they're going to that Angular conference because they're going to find the right profiles. And you as an attorney go with that same idea. So basically, the match is a lot easier to make. than if you apply to a job online without that context set up, right? You also get to speak to them directly. I would believe that some of these companies would even do interviews on site at the conference from time to time. I'm pretty sure they do that. So yeah.

 

Subrat:

I had an experience of similar experience, but I would like to ask what is the ratio of getting mostly asking in terms of getting a job in a conference versus in a hackathon. Because I attend a lot of hackathon and I think in most almost every hackathon, the sponsor company or some other company will offer you a job.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah,

 

Subrat:

So what's

 

Alain Chautard:

yeah, yeah,

 

Subrat:

the

 

Alain Chautard:

yeah. Yeah, and the hackathon

 

Subrat:

percentage?

 

Alain Chautard:

is even better in that sense because the attendees are coding. So they are

 

Subrat:

Yeah.

 

Alain Chautard:

showcasing their skills. And basically, it does a lot of the job out of the box without doing anything else. So a conference might be a little bit different in that perspective. But we could also see it the way that if you go to a hackathon you want to showcase your skills, which means maybe you're really looking for a job. Whereas a conference, you'll have people who have been working for five, 10 plus years with the technology,

 

Subrat:

Hmm.

 

Alain Chautard:

they're fine with their jobs or they're self-employed. They don't care about these people trying to recruit. So the competition might be less intense at a conference than at a hackathon. That's my guess.

 

Subrat:

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah. But yeah, I don't have exact numbers or stats. It's just

 

Subrat:

Yeah,

 

Alain Chautard:

intuition

 

Subrat:

what

 

Alain Chautard:

on this.

 

Subrat:

I was saying is what I wanted to ask was like in hackathon mostly maybe the two runners up or maybe the three top three top five they got their demos and they offer them jobs so how like what should be the procedure here like you just go and approach their booth and say that I am looking for a job or

 

Alain Chautard:

Oh yeah.

 

Subrat:

like because

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, so these companies that come specifically for recruiting, usually they are very open about it and they basically have big signs we're hiring. And

 

Subrat:

Okay.

 

Alain Chautard:

sometimes they're even going to go on stage between talks and say, Hey, by the way, we're trying to recruit 20 developers, come to us, find us at the booth, we'll talk and everything. That's their only

 

Subrat:

Mm-hmm.

 

Alain Chautard:

purpose. Because. Think about it, it's an Angular conference and there's a bank or an insurance company coming here. Why are they here? Well, with the chance to hire people, they're not trying to sell anything. They just say, we want good developers and we know we're gonna find them at a conference. So that's why they're here.

 

Subrat:

Mm-hmm.

 

Alain Chautard:

And usually they have HR people on site to help. So they're not salespeople, they're really just focused on the hiring. And yeah, but the... Basically, as soon as you approach the booth, they know why you're coming. They

 

Subrat:

Yeah.

 

Alain Chautard:

basically expect you to have a resume in your hand and stuff.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Interesting.

 

Subrat:

Yeah,

 

Lucas Paganini:

So

 

Subrat:

pretty cool.

 

Lucas Paganini:

the problem of figuring out which companies are hiring, this is not a problem of the attendee. Like the

 

Alain Chautard:

It

 

Lucas Paganini:

company

 

Alain Chautard:

is not.

 

Lucas Paganini:

is going to take care of it.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even sometimes the other companies, so the ones that do Angular stuff, they're also hiring. And they would mention it. It's like, oh, by the way, we're also recruiting right now. So even the regular sponsors of the conference might be looking for help as well.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Interesting. Awesome. And lastly, I'm going to apply the same line of questioning for the networking. So how can you extract the most amount of value from networking? Also keeping in mind the, well, I think the most important point is going to be the social expectations of people, especially developers. I think in general. There is a stereotype of developers being more shy and having more difficulties approaching new people to meet and et cetera. And I think I can't say that this is the case for everyone of course, but I think it is a stereotype that really does

 

Alain Chautard:

Uh-huh.

 

Lucas Paganini:

make sense and it really is something that we can see from our peers. So how

 

Subrat:

It's

 

Lucas Paganini:

can...

 

Subrat:

the case for most people.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Yes, yes. So how would a regular stereotype developer extract the most amount of value from networking?

 

Alain Chautard:

So one thing that all of the conferences have in common is that when there is a break for lunch or something, they have these tables. So usually it's a round table and you can sit probably at least 10 people around it. So you're gonna have to sit at a table to have your lunch and other people are gonna sit around. And... Sometimes discussions start. If everybody's shy and introverted, then everybody sits in their corner and doesn't say anything for the entire lunch. This happens, I've seen it. But most of the time you'll have at least two or three people that start discussing stuff. And they're gonna start discussing topics that relate to the conference. So maybe they're gonna start talking about standalone components. And one guy is gonna say, oh, we started using standalone components in our app and we did this and that and... Oh, and we failed at doing this and the other is gonna... And basically, because this start talking about technical stuff, it's easier to get into that conversation. You can say, oh, we also tried and we did this and that, and then it worked. You can basically contribute and help. You don't have to start from scratch, right? You don't have to start, hey, how are you? Nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah. You can really piggyback on an existing conversation. and contribute to it, or just be a passive listener and just learn from what these people are saying. That's also a possibility. But, yeah, very often it's just so tempting to contribute because if they're talking about stuff you know about and you've done it in a specific way, you'll just want to share. It's just natural that you want to see it. So probably the easiest way to get into networking and interact with people is this. lunches or breaks where people have to sit at a table. It's fairly random and you can start, you know, interacting, contributing to discussions and such.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome. OK. Unless there's any specific points that you two want to bring up about the attendee experience, I think it would be interesting for us to start talking about the speaker experience now.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, definitely we can transition into the speaker experience. And... So the first thing I want to say is that anybody can speak at a conference. That's the first point I want to make. You don't have to be a Google employee or Microsoft employee or be a GDE or a MVP. You don't need a specific title or work for any specific company to speak at a conference. The way it works is that a few months before the conference, they are going to publish on their website what is called a CFP, which is Call for Papers. And that CFP is a way to say, if you have any idea of things you want to talk about, just submit your idea. And that's really how everything gets started. So if I want to speak at a conference in India in October, for instance, I would go to their website, I would find the link to the CFP. So sometimes they call it CFP, sometimes they call it speakers or call for speakers, call for papers. You would go there and you fill out a form. You get your name, the talk you want to do, title, description, keywords. Usually they ask if you have any previous speaking experience but some of them don't. Some of them don't care. They're just going to focus on the idea that you have and nothing else. And then you submit the form, and that's it. You applied to speak at a conference. How crazy is that? Anybody can do it. It's fully public. There was no filter. You can go ahead and apply. So why would you do that is the next thing. Why would you speak at a conference? When we started this podcast, I mentioned When you go to a conference as an attendee, it's like going to the movies. It's like going to a movie theater. You sit down and you watch the speakers do their stuff. Now, as a speaker, it's kind of the same thing, but you're on stage. So you're the movie star, in a sense. And when you start speaking at conferences, you are becoming known. Basically, your name is out there. The conference... They are. They want to sell tickets. So they are going to push information about you and your talk and everything on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, you name it. It's gonna be all over the place. Once you've spoken at conferences, if people Google your name, they are going to find out those websites, basically. So as a speaker, your profile instantly becomes a lot more public than what it was before. Again, it's as if you've never been an actor in a movie and all of a sudden you've made a movie. So now you're an actor, right? And people recognize that and it gives you a completely different status. That's a very big deal. I cannot emphasize enough how big it is. And it makes sense, right? Think about it. You go to a movie, you watch the actors, they're like, oh wow, this is really good stuff. If you see that actor 10 seconds later in the streets, you'd be like, oh, wow, they're right here. And there's this star effect, right? You want to get an autograph or do a selfie or that sort of thing. It's pretty much the same with a conference. There is that same star effect. A little bit less, of course. It's not Hollywood. And tech speakers are not that famous. But still, it does change how people see you. And if you want to, let's say, start a business or become a GD or do something that is going to require you to interact with lots of people, find clients, all of these things, speaking at a conference is really a great way to get your profile out there. And then people know about you and then you're not just alone trying to do your own stuff anymore. a lot of people are going to see that you exist from now on. That's really the main thing, right? So that's our profile perspective. Any questions on that before I get into the other aspects of being a speaker?

 

Lucas Paganini:

Well, you mentioned a lot of good parts about being a speaker. I imagine that there's also a lot of pressure into delivering. I mean, you're going to be on the stage. So you're saying, oh, it's the same thing. It's just that you're on stage.

 

Alain Chautard:

Hahaha

 

Lucas Paganini:

And also, there's a chance that you're going to freeze there, and you're going to be like,

 

Subrat:

Hehehehe

 

Lucas Paganini:

oh, shit, the demo is not working. So there's this.

 

Alain Chautard:

Hahaha

 

Lucas Paganini:

this fear that people might have, which 99.99% of the cases is just fiction and people extrapolating for the worst possible scenario ever. But still, there is that. So I think we will also need to talk about how to deal with this and does it get easier over time?

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, so first thing is don't do a live demo on stage. Don't

 

Subrat:

Hehehehehehe

 

Alain Chautard:

rely on Wi-Fi either. Just have everything offline, downloaded on your machine. If you want to show interactivity, you can record a video that will be playing, but everything offline, right? Especially for your first conferences. That makes it a lot easier. I love doing live coding. And I do that now, but my very first conferences, I would not do that, too scary and too risky. Being on stage, yes, it is scary. It does get easier over time. But the thing is, you choose a topic, right? It is your talk idea that you are delivering on stage. So... If, let's say, you've been doing forms with Angular forever, you know everything about forms, and you have some tips and tricks you want to share, or you have a great example of complex form, you just want to showcase, and how you did it, and everything, this is a topic that you know 100%. You know everything about it. You're super comfortable with it. So when you're on stage, you just know the thing. There's no way it can disappear instantly. And that's what helps, really. If you've been doing it for a long time, pick a topic that you're 100% comfortable with, that you could do pretty much eyes closed, no script, you just know it in and out because you've been doing it forever, then yeah, it makes things a lot easier, a lot less stressful. The most difficult part of being a speaker, it's the five minutes before you get on stage. That's the most difficult part because you have your laptop, you're ready. You see the previous talk going on in the room. You're basically stressed. You're right there waiting either behind the scene, behind the stage. You see lots of people, the lights, everything, and you just start freaking out. That's the most difficult part. Once you step on stage and you start doing the thing, you basically forget about all of it because you just have to deliver now. So, and you know the content, so you just get into it and then it's automatic. But the five minutes before. That's so difficult. I still don't know how to deal with this. It's hard. Yeah, my philosophy now is I just know it's going to be five difficult minutes, but that's okay. Nothing can happen. It's just waiting.

 

Subrat:

I think one thing I can say from my experience not about the conference about the videos and some other public speaking stuff like it happens with everyone like it what my thought was before doing a video or maybe before speaking on a lot of people that I am only bad at this this nervousness and numbness is only happening to me. but it's not the case, it happens to all the people. And if you have that mindset and goes to the stage, then they know that if something will go wrong, what worst can happen? Like you will correct that and you will ask them,

 

Alain Chautard:

Exactly.

 

Subrat:

sorry, this is wrong and so this fear will go away. This is what my hack, internal I will thought like, I'm not the worst, everyone has the same issue.

 

Alain Chautard:

Exactly. And

 

Subrat:

And

 

Alain Chautard:

the

 

Subrat:

then...

 

Alain Chautard:

audience is

 

Subrat:

do

 

Alain Chautard:

all

 

Subrat:

it.

 

Alain Chautard:

of our peers. They're all developers. They

 

Subrat:

Yeah.

 

Alain Chautard:

know that stuff sometimes doesn't work, because, I mean, that's what we do every day, right? We code something. We think it's going to work. Oh, no, something is not working. Why? Same thing can happen on stage. People understand it. I've seen a couple of times where the speaker had not like a panic attack, but almost, because things were not going as expected. And the crowd was very supportive. Basically, everyone started saying, oh, you're going to do it, no problem. And clapping and encouraging her. It was amazing. Meaning people are, they want you to succeed when you're on stage. And most of the audience, they know that they would not want to be on stage either, right? Because they know it's a scary thing to do. So they are not going to judge you because you're on stage. It's quite the opposite. They want you to succeed. They want, and they're going to be very supportive. of what you do in any case.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome. Excellent points. I really like the actionable points about not having a demo and having everything offline. That's a really,

 

Subrat:

That's

 

Lucas Paganini:

really

 

Subrat:

a pro

 

Lucas Paganini:

great

 

Subrat:

tip.

 

Lucas Paganini:

tip.

 

Subrat:

That's a pro

 

Lucas Paganini:

Pro

 

Subrat:

tip.

 

Lucas Paganini:

tip, yes. Awesome. What else do you think it's important to talk about in terms of the speaker experience?

 

Alain Chautard:

So in terms of speaker experience, the conference, they see the speakers as their stars. Sometimes even more than the attendees would see you as a prominent speaker or anything. So the conferences, they do their best to make the speakers happy. In a sense that they're gonna organize a speaker dinner for you, they're gonna give you gifts, they are going to... You get a lot of stuff out of conference, gifts, food. They really want people to come back and be happy with the experience they have. Sometimes they're going to organize events for speakers. I've been on a cruise at a conference on a boat in Sydney, Australia, which was amazing. Being on a boat around the Opera in Sydney, all paid by the conference. Perfect. So they do really, really good and fun stuff for the speakers, always, because they want the speakers to be happy and come back the next year, basically. Which also means that most conferences are going to pay for the hotel, and you don't get to pay for the conference ticket. So you go there for free. That's. always guaranteed, basically. If you are a speaker at a conference, you can attend the entire thing for free. Most conferences are gonna pay the hotel, and I would say most of them would also pay for travel to the conference place, because it's rare that you would have a conference in your own city, unless you live in New York or San Francisco. Conferences are all over the place. So most of the time, you have to travel there. and many conferences are going to pay for your flight to get to the conference. So flight, hotel, food, conference tickets. You can pretty much expect all of this to be covered by the conference, which is a big benefit because most of the time we are talking, you know, at least $2,000 if you count all of these things together. So it's a pretty good gift.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Yeah, and is it easy to talk to the organizers and maybe arrange for you to go back to your country at a later date and then you can turn that conference into travel? Because

 

Alain Chautard:

Oh

 

Lucas Paganini:

I

 

Alain Chautard:

yeah.

 

Lucas Paganini:

imagine that that's something that would be very interesting for a lot of people.

 

Alain Chautard:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm a traveler myself. So the year before COVID, I applied to conferences in London, in Sydney, and I went to Bolivia in South America. So I did, my goal was to do all continents in that year. It's just lucky that it was the year before COVID because then we could not travel for like two or three years. So somehow I got that luck. of doing it. And for Sydney, for instance, I didn't want to travel to Australia just to the conference and come back because that would be, you know, I think it was 16 or 17 hours of travel to get there. So it had to be worth it. So I talked to the organizers. I said, hey, can I fly one week earlier? And it was a lot less expensive to do that. The plane ticket was a lot less expensive. So I said, just fly me one week earlier and they paid for just a few hotel nights, I paid the rest, but I spent one week in Sydney and I used that to travel and explore and everything. Did the same in London, did the same in Bolivia, so I was able to travel and visit. Yeah, usually they are flexible, the organizers, especially if you find a good flight that's less expensive than what they would pay for, then they're just going to say yes.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Another

 

Subrat:

Yeah, what

 

Lucas Paganini:

pro

 

Subrat:

about

 

Lucas Paganini:

tip.

 

Subrat:

like, yeah, what about the visa? So suppose you, they will give you a visitor visa, like you need to apply for a visa or something.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, visas usually, because a conference is very short, just two or three days, you don't need a work visa or anything. It's very much like a tourist visa, I believe. The only time I had to get some kind of visa was when I went to India, I believe. I had to do something online before and get some documents. I'm not sure if it was a vSign, but something similar to just say, yeah, I'm going to be five days, one week there and do a talk and everything. So yeah, based on the country, I would just ask the organizers. They usually know about these things because they get speakers from other countries, so they're familiar with the process and they can guide you of, you know, how to do things and, and everything. But most of the time, because they're very short. conferences you don't have to do much

 

Subrat:

Mm-hmm.

 

Alain Chautard:

in terms of paperwork upfront. You need a passport if you travel internationally for sure, but other than that should be easy.

 

Subrat:

I think I would like to go back a bit and like in terms of suppose I want to present something in the conference. So according to what all things I should keep in my mind like how I structure a talk and how the things would flow. So how what should be your suggestion on that.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, so one of the difficulties when applying to a conference is that they all have different talk formats. Some of them are going to have a 20-minute talk or a five-minute. ng-conf has these five-minute talks, for instance, which is very, very, very short, five minutes. Some of them have a one-hour format, so every talk is one hour, one hour, one hour, which is very long. So... Based on that, it's going to change a lot of things of how you approach what you're going to do on stage. A short talk, you cannot really get into complex examples. You'd have to be very focused on the higher level stuff and show less code and those sort of things. Whereas if you have an hour, you can really go deep and show a lot of different examples, maybe do some live coding. Yeah, when I have an hour, I tend to do live coding at some point because, and I try to get questions from the audience. That's the other thing to be aware of. Is there a Q&A at the end of the session or not? Because some conferences do that. They would say, hey, you have a 45 minute talk and then we have 15 minutes of Q&A. And they have, you know, facilitators in the room with microphones to just get people to ask questions. So yeah, this is good to know upfront so that you can get ready for that if that's the case. Content-wise... Yeah, how to know what to talk about, what not to talk about, how deep to go. That's, that's difficult to answer because it really becomes second to nature with experience. Once you've done it two or three times, you realize when you go too deep or not enough, and then you just adjust and you have the right thing. So what I would say is. If you're planning to do a talk at a conference, before you do the actual talk, do it at a meetup before. So just submit the same talk to a meetup or a podcast. And basically do the same thing. That way, that's an official rehearsal where you just go through your content and you're gonna see what works and what doesn't. And you'll see the kind of questions people have around it. And then you can really tune your content and make it better. I think I've done that for pretty much every single talk I've been giving at a big conference. I would have a smaller meetup, smaller event where I do the same talk. Two months before just to make sure the content works. I'm it's not too long, too short. I get people where I want them to be out of that. Yeah.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome, awesome. It doesn't seem like it, but it's been 47 minutes already. Like, yeah, we talked about a lot of things. It almost feels like it was just five minutes because it went by so fast. I really felt really engaged with this subject. And I think that was mostly on you. You had... a great way to give us the examples. I even loved this storytelling when you

 

Subrat:

Yeah.

 

Lucas Paganini:

were talking about some of the examples. I really felt myself there. That was really good, man. But yeah, I think we will need to start wrapping up here before this actually becomes a movie. So, yeah, is there anything that you want to say before we start wrapping up and doing? picks and promotions.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, if people consider speaking at conferences, if they want to do it, but they're not sure, they can send me an email with their talk idea and I can give them assistance. I'm always happy to do that. So yeah, we can share my contact details. People can reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter or anything. And I'd be happy to give my two cents on their idea and hopefully help. them speak at a conference.

 

Lucas Paganini:

That's really nice of you. Awesome.

 

Alain Chautard:

Well, I always like to help people get things done. So.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome. Okay, so let's get started with that. So where can people find you?

 

Alain Chautard:

So I would say LinkedIn is one of the best ways to find me. Otherwise, you can go to my website, angulartraining.com. And in the bottom right corner of the website, there's a chat window. You can just click here, type something, and it's going to come to my email inbox. So that's also an easy one. The email address is somewhere on that page, too. So angulartraining.com. That's basically me. You'll find the stuff too. contact me on that page.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome. And we're

 

Subrat:

or

 

Lucas Paganini:

going

 

Subrat:

people

 

Lucas Paganini:

to put

 

Subrat:

might

 

Lucas Paganini:

all those

 

Subrat:

google

 

Lucas Paganini:

links.

 

Subrat:

you.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Yes.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, that

 

Subrat:

That's

 

Alain Chautard:

should

 

Subrat:

the

 

Alain Chautard:

work too.

 

Subrat:

easiest way.

 

Lucas Paganini:

We're gonna put all those links in the show notes. So if you're watching on your favorite Podcast player you can just go to the description and you will find the links there Alain what else are you working on that you would like to share with the audience?

 

Alain Chautard:

So my main initiative this year has been a daily Angular newsletter. So I'm writing an email every day. Not every day, five days per week. So every work day, I'm sending an email with content about Angular. It's meant to be short, 30 seconds to a couple of minutes to read it, focus on one single topic every day, and we basically cover. I mean lots of ground. We've done hundreds of those already since the beginning of the year. Every day I send something meant to be useful, tactical, to the point so people can learn something new every day about Angular. It's free. You can sign up on angulartraining.com. There's a few links to the newsletter out there. So yeah, feel free to join, and you'll receive the next one.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome. Also, I have to say, after your last episode here, which, by the way, if anyone wants to hear, I don't recall by head what is the number of the episode, but it was fairly recent. Wasn't too long ago. And we talked about the process of becoming a Google Developer expert, and how was it for Alain to get to this position. And after that, we chatted, so I connected with Alain on LinkedIn, et cetera. And he was showing me that he actually has a certification for Angular developers, which I thought was extremely interesting because I didn't knew of anyone else doing that, or if they were, not in the level of quality that Alain is doing, and certainly not with his credentials. So I really need to mention this. If you are a company and you want to make sure that all your Angular developers have the same level of expertise, you can just put them to do a line certification. And that way you will find out their respective technical levels and you'll be able to figure out which developers you should dedicate more time for training based on that assessment. And you can also. If you find this issue and you figure out that you have people that need to be properly trained to reach the level of quality that you want in your company, then you can also hire a line to do this for you. So it's the perfect scenario. You can evaluate the knowledge of your developers. You can even do that through hiring processes. So if you are in doubt about three candidates and you only have one spot, for example, you can just... ask Alain for his assessment on that, and then he can apply his certification process in those three candidates, and then give you an answer of which one he thinks would be a best fit for your company. So I think there are hundreds of use cases for what Alain offers in his company, Angular Training, and I think more companies and more individuals too should be aware, because if I were looking for a job as an Angular developer, I would first look for authority on that field. So in my particular case, I am the host of adventures in Angular, so that helps. But if it weren't for that, I would definitely be looking for certifications. But truthfully speaking, nowadays, everybody can say that they did an online course about Angular that doesn't say anything, that just, that only says that you watched all the videos. But if you get... a certification from angulartraining.com, then it actually tells the world that you not only studied, but you actually fixated that knowledge and you know how to apply it, which is a lot more interesting and a lot more valuable to companies looking for hire. So yeah, if you're not gonna sell it, I'm gonna sell it for you.

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, and what's making it unique is that it's not just a quiz that people answer questions and then they have a certificate. There's a coding test. So you have to code an app in Angular. And then there's an interview with a GDE where you have to answer questions about that code and everything. So we really try to check the person in depth that they really know Angular. So people cannot cheat. If you have that certification. You're basically proving that you are the real deal. There's no way around it. You've written code, you've done an interview, you're really a good developer, if you are certified by us, yeah.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome, awesome. All right, so.

 

Subrat:

It totally makes sense. I think if you want to be ahead of the race, you should have a certification from Ireland.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Yep. So in my case, it's gonna be quick. So I'm always just promoting my company. So for

 

Subrat:

Lucas

 

Lucas Paganini:

those of

 

Subrat:

is

 

Lucas Paganini:

you...

 

Subrat:

stuck

 

Lucas Paganini:

Oh, I'm stuck.

 

Subrat:

or are you able to hear him

 

Lucas Paganini:

I don't, Alain, can you hear me?

 

Alain Chautard:

Yeah, I can hear you all good.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Okay,

 

Subrat:

not

 

Lucas Paganini:

so.

 

Subrat:

Lucas.

 

Lucas Paganini:

I think subreddit you you are stuck.

 

Alain Chautard:

I'm not sure that's an issue, but we're good.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome.

 

Subrat:

Okay, okay.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Okay.

 

Subrat:

I am not able to hear locus. Okay.

 

Lucas Paganini:

So in my case, I'm going to promote my company. So for those of you that maybe aren't aware of it, I am the CEO of Unvoid. So we are a software development company and we are specialized in Angular. Thus the fact that I am here talking to all of you. So if you have a project that you would like to outsource or that you would like to bring external help. Because that's the thing, you don't need to outsource the entire project. Maybe you just need a couple of developers to help your team, to extend your team. Then we can help you with that. And we can do it with developers that are really specialized in Angular. And we literally say no to everything else. So it's not a generalist company that takes every single software development project. No, it's more like if it's not. inside our scope of things that we can really do well, then we just say no. And we say no for your own benefit because we don't want to pay for premium quality and receiving mediocre. So if you hire us, you should know that you're gonna receive premium quality. Otherwise, we're just gonna tell you, hey, I'm sorry, but we can't do this for you. So if that's a question that you have, Can Lucas's company do this for me? Then just go to unvoid.com and then fill out the form to talk directly to me. And we can have a meeting where you can explain to me what is your necessity and we can talk about whether this is something that we would be able to help you or not. That's gonna be my promo. Subrat is having a few technical issues. He is probably gonna be back in a few minutes. When he gets back, I'm gonna hand the ball to him. But in the meantime, I think we can go to picks. Do you have any picks that you would like to mention to the audience?

 

Alain Chautard:

Nothing that I can think of. I'll surprise his back so I guess

 

Lucas Paganini:

Ah,

 

Alain Chautard:

we can let

 

Lucas Paganini:

so

 

Alain Chautard:

him

 

Lucas Paganini:

bright.

 

Alain Chautard:

do his promo.

 

Subrat:

Yeah.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Yeah, your turn. What would you like to promote?

 

Subrat:

Yeah, promotion point of view currently I'm not working in anything. I'm in vacation to India for a month. So that's why my videos has stopped being publics, but I have coded everything. I have coded love, mostly the micro front end part using NX. So that's the thing you guys can expect. Maybe, maybe in a month I will release one by one videos and. Sorry, I'm being very late, but as I'm in India, I don't have any equipment with me, so I'm not able to edit. But yeah, apart from that, I'm working on some other projects something related to deals with Amazon sellers. That might go public and I might say it and maybe in some.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Awesome, great. Okay, so that was it for promos. In terms of pics, Alain mentioned that he doesn't have any particular pics. I'll be honest, I don't have either. Most times when I get to this part of the show, I'm like freaking out and thinking, oh Jesus, I always forget

 

Subrat:

Hehehehe

 

Lucas Paganini:

about pics. And then I start thinking about some random thing. But the truth is, most times I really don't. They either come up at the spot or they don't. And today I don't have any. So, Subred, unless you have some shiny, amazing thing to bring to the audience, I think we won't have any pics today.

 

Subrat:

Yeah, I will usually pick a book like that. If you don't have anything, I'll pick a book. Take the one book I was just thinking of buying is The Mountain ECU by Brenna West. So just go ahead and check if it is feasible. I haven't read that though. I just looked through it, reviews on YouTube and it seems good. Like it seems how you feel yourself and how you can don't feel small. You are the mountain and you can handle everything by yourself. That's what I got from the reviews, but I yet to read the whole book. So. I'll back again with another peak if it is very good.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Cool, okay. I'm always really divided on that. I never know if the spiritual coach is gonna give you, is gonna give me a life insight, or if I'm just gonna finish the book and think, okay, it was just that. But yeah, it's definitely a 50-50 chance every time I get a book like this.

 

Subrat:

Yeah, one thing I realized about reading books is it's always about who is reading the book. So you will get the insight according to your beliefs and thoughts. So it might be like you get something else and if I read the same book, I will get something else out of it. So it depends on who is reading.

 

Lucas Paganini:

good insight. Okay, so I think that was all. Alain, you should know that you are more than welcome to come back anytime you want. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. You

 

Alain Chautard:

Thank

 

Lucas Paganini:

bring

 

Alain Chautard:

you.

 

Lucas Paganini:

excellent insights and always detailed examples of your past experiences. I'm very thankful for that. And yeah, it was a lovely episode. Thank you.

 

Alain Chautard:

Thank you for having me.

 

Subrat:

Thank

 

Lucas Paganini:

Always

 

Subrat:

you,

 

Lucas Paganini:

a pleasure.

 

Subrat:

bye bye.

 

Lucas Paganini:

Bye everyone and I'll see you in the next episode.