Prepare for posts; I’m speaking at SXSW

Last week I got an email that said my SXSW speaking proposal was accepted. Strangely, my joy was coupled with a bit of disappointed. After the PanelPicker closed, I felt like I didn’t market my talk well enough. That combined with my OSCON proposal being denied, I felt there was no chance I was going to speak at SXSW. However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the sound of it. I’ve had such a busy year going to conferences, speaking, writing, and building stuff. You all realize this webhooks stuff doesn’t pay, right? I was actually looking forward to not having a huge stressful talk to worry about.

But now I do! Lucky for you, I’ve decided to make it a really great talk. I’ve started work on it immediately and will be developing it probably up until March.

What is the talk? It’s not another “WebHooks are the Future” talk. Well it is, but in disguise. I’ve decided to focus on context. Like I mentioned before, all that vision stuff usually at the end of my talks will come front and center. The talk is called: How WebHooks Will Make Us All Programmers.

In order to describe this, I’ll need to first explain webhooks to those that are unfamiliar. I feel this is getting easier and easier as I gain experience and more tangible examples pop up, like PubSubHubbub and TweetHook. However, I’ll have to take it up a notch further because I won’t have that much time to talk about them. Before I can explain how webhooks will make us all programmers, I also have to share why this is worth doing at all. I have to explain why we should all be programmers.

Yay! It’s a sort of philosophy of computer science. I mean, that’s the stuff I really love talking about, so why don’t I go all out? Well I will.

But I have a lot of work in front of me. I need to finish building more examples. I’ve finally gotten to a point and built enough infrastructure where I can really start showing the power of webhooks through examples. I need to develop a super concise explanation of webhooks, probably something visual and animated — a mini presentation within a presentation. I also need to start practicing speech again. The last time I went without practice it was a disaster, despite getting my point across.

Part of my preparation will involve lots of writing and sharing on this blog. I need to prototype and validate individual ideas before I bring them all together in an epic talk. That’s the only way to make it as awesome as it should be. It also means there will be lots of follow up material for attendees.

So at the very least, my goal is to post something relating to the ideas in this talk once a month. And your feedback will be much appreciated.