Monthly Roundup - August 2024

Goodbye August. Hello September.

Goodbye Summer. Hello Autumn.

Despite not having gone to school for over 15 years now (university still counts as school in my eyes), September always feels like the start of the new “year” to me. Summer is over, the weather is turning colder, and it’s time for turtlenecks and warm mugs of hot chocolate while discussing the next hot topics to learn. So that's running in my head while I'm writing this post: what's on your radar to learn about this "new school year"?

Work I’ve Done

• August was somehow quiet yet busy! Companies were slow to respond because people were still on holiday, but I feel like things are ramping up for September.
• My main focus for August was my online workshops:
  • I updated my Engineer Your Talks: Brainstorming Talk Ideas workshop and turned it into a longer 2-hour workshop.
  • I also launched the second in the series, Engineer Your Talks: Writing Talk Proposals. This one will focus on getting ready for the next conference season, helping you improve your talk proposals.
  • I've got plans to launch the 3rd and 4th of the series (Developing Your Talk Idea and Designing Your Slides) in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned! Sign up here if you want to get updated when new workshops go live.
• As usual, I had a couple of speaker 1:1 coaching sessions this month. This time, the key themes were preparing and designing the story structure and brainstorming new talk ideas.
• I've also been preparing for my own conference and meetup talks! I'm excited to be speaking at several events over the next few months:
  • ReactJS Girls on September 19th: I'll be giving my Level Up talk.
  • LeadDev London on September 25th: I'll be MCing!
  • HelloStavanger from 16th-17th October: I'll be doing my Refactor Yourself talk, all about applying refactoring to your own behaviours and habit loops.
  • HaggisRuby on October 24th: I'm excited to put together a brand new talk, Be A Goldfish, all about understanding resilience and your emotions!
  • Øredev from 6th-8th November: I'll be giving my Refactor Yourself talk.
• It's been fun putting myself in my client's shoes and practising what I preach. I went through my own brainstorming framework and came up with some new ideas (including the Be A Goldfish one mentioned above). Now to turn these into new talk proposals to submit to some conferences!

Events I’ve Attended

• I ended up arranging 6 Tech Ladies Dinner Roundtables for August! In part, I found some brilliant restaurant deals, giving 50% off, which I couldn't resist. I'm still so excited about setting these dinners up, though. Each time, we have an amazing group of women attend, and I love being able to facilitate and coordinate these conversations.
• August was so quiet, that I didn't go to any events except for the ones I organised myself!

Stories I’ve Explored

Stories are a huge part of how I approach talks and blog posts, so each month I'll highlight the fictional stories I've explored recently. Especially those that play around with some aspect of their storytelling.

• I loved the Rook & Rose trilogy. These books are set in a fantasy city reminiscent of Venice and follow the story of Ren, a con artist pretending to be a noblewoman. It's a delicious epic read with twists, good world-building and found family. You know you've finished a good series, when you're just sad to be leaving the characters after you're done.
• I started rereading Stormlight Archive from Brandon Sanderson. He's one of my favourite writers, and the final book in his Stormlight Archive series is coming out later this year. I read the first of these back in 2014, so it felt like I was due a reread! These are seriously chonky books, though, with each book clocking in at over 1000 pages. I'm halfway through Book 3 and am reminded again of why I love this world and these characters.
• I've been slowly making my way through the Monsterverse: all the recent Godzilla and King Kong movies and TV shows. There's more than I realised, so it's been keeping me busy!
  • The surprise so far has been Monarch, the spin-off TV series. While the movies have been entertaining, Monarch is giving me the character development and human backstory that I was missing from the movies (which can be summed up with "Big Monsters Fight, Humans Die").
• I finished watching seasons 2 and 3 of Girls5Eva, and it's so ridiculous. It echoes some of what I've been doing: sometimes, you need to take a leap and shape what you want to do with your life rather than do the predictable route.

Engineer Your Talks: Brainstorming Talk Ideas Workshop

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