Yes, I am a female-tech speaker & here is my Journey

Hey Guys, I am Neha from New Delhi, India. I am working as UI Tech lead also I am the organizer of JSLovers.

Best things which happen in your life are always unplanned.

Tech speaking is I never planned. It is just something happened to me when I was working on my meetup — JSLovers. I was always active in knowledge sharing. (I used to learn from w3schools and in forum I used to solve the people problems I think that was the stack overflow of that time for me :p). When it comes to public speaking, especially in India, you can’t ignore the problem of gender gap.

This is my journey of public speaking of last 2 years (excluding JSLovers’s sessions) so that it can inspire more people (mainly females) to come and participate in public speaking.

1) C# corner Delhi Conference

C#corner is a well-known name in the world. They have a very huge community in India and have chapter in every state/city of India. They are recognized community from Microsoft and maximum people get MVP awards from their community. I got the invitation to speak at their Delhi conference. I spoke on “Component Based Architecture”. The conference held in the IT college and sharing knowledge with college students was one of the most exciting opportunity. As students always have lot of good questions and suggestions too.

Here is my presentation

2) Google Dev Fest, New Delhi

Google Developer Group aka GDG is the group for developers by Google. GDG is all over the world and run by the volunteers. Once in a year every, GDG conduct annual fest in their region. In Delhi, it took place on — and I got the invitation to speak there. I gave the session of PWA — Progressive Web Apps which was attended by more than 200 people. I gave the brief introduction with code-lab and demo. It was a awesome experience taking people on the road of the PWA & solving queries.

Here is my presentation from the conference.

3) CSS Conf, Singapore

After speaking at local meetups and at JSLovers I started applying at conference out of India and then my talk selected at CSSConf , Singapore. I talked on “10 Places where you can ditch Javascript”. For me this was the best experience and learning opportunity. I loved interacting with developers across the globe and meeting my inspiration Lea Verou.

Here is my presentation from the conference.

4) Twitter Developer Group — New Delhi

Twitter Developer Group is the one of the group that do carry a name of brand but open for any kind of talks. Twitter Developer Group was looking for speakers and I applied to speak on PWA. After few days I got the confirmation from organizer for speaking at the platform.

There were speaker from Microsoft too. I loved that many people were the product manager and was not aware of PWA and I was able to guide them in same.

5) C# corner Annual Conference

C#corner organized their annual conference in April in Delhi. It was 3 days conference attended by students, professionals all around world. There were 25 speakers including international speakers too and I was the only Female speaker in them.

I gave the session on “Let’s learn Nodejs”. I covered the basics and demo of nodejs. My talk was attended by 100+ audience.

C#corner is the best platform in India to connect with the developers and learn and talk about technologies.

Here is my presentation from the conference.

6) Women Tech Makers — New Delhi

Women Tech Makers is very close to me as being a female and in Tech I feel very happy to meet and talk to more like-minded. I never imagined that one day I will be speaking at this platform. This was my first non-tech talk. WTM team wanted me to share my journey/challenges as a female running a tech meetup group JSLovers to inspire more females.

I shared all about JSLovers — how I started, what were my challenges, what were my learnings , how I got speakers , sponsors etc.

I loved interacting and inspiring females from my journey.

Few tips from my own experience:

1. There is no crash course for being a great public speaker. It is something you learn by doing it.
2. Connect with audience it is very important.
3. Be always clear about the target group of your talk. But be open to address people who are not of those target group
4. Stage fear? I still feel stage fear but not much (luckily) but to handle your stage fear start preparing in front of your friends.
5. Face rejection with grace. I keep applying for conference and start getting rejection but I never get disappoint.
6. Speak at your college, in your company at your local meetup. As long as you are up for knowledge sharing you are good.

Do you have any inspiring story? or any tips? let me know in comment section.