Monthly Roundup - July 2024
It's the first week of August here in London, and despite the cloudy skies, it is annoyingly warm. It always feels like most of London just goes on a summer break in July and August. It's not that people are not working at all and taking long holidays (although some do, I guess), but it always feels like London just slows down. There are fewer conferences, fewer meet-ups, and everything seems to be paused, just waiting for September to return.
Work I've Done
This month I worked on a new internal workshop for Engineering leaders, a new online workshop for new speakers, 1:1 speaker coaching with clients and more Tech Ladies Dinner Roundtable dinners!
I've been super busy, but I won't lie, it is a tough market right now. I started this Monthly Roundup series as a way to share insights into how it is to start your own business, and honestly, it is still challenging to find clients. Companies are still dealing with the effects of redundancies, teams don't have learning & development budgets and many people who got laid off are still looking for their next roles.
I'm optimistic, though. I've had the time to develop several workshops that I love giving and that I know are super useful. I've got 1:1 clients and workshop clients who have been awesome to work with. It's more about waiting for the market to get into better shape, and then I know I can hit the ground running with the content that I already have.
If you know any folks who are self-employed right now, give them a hug. They might need it.
Speaker Workshop for Engineering Leaders
My main focus for July was delivering the workshop I talked about last month for a client. The workshop's goal was to help the engineering leadership team design and deliver more impactful internal presentations by applying a product mindset to their talks.
I designed it as a 3-hour workshop, jam-packing it full of anecdotes, examples and exercises. We explored who their target audience was, what the goals and outcomes of the presentation should focus on, how to refine the story structure and slide design, and how to improve their delivery. The attendees each brought along an idea for an upcoming presentation, and during the workshop, I guided them through various practical exercises to develop the idea in more detail.
For this workshop, I created a 14-page workshop handbook with all the exercises (and some bonus ones) for the attendees to fill in during the session. I loved seeing how useful and practical the attendees found the exercises and the handbook, and it's a format that works really well for this type of workshop. It's all about guiding the attendees through the different exercises and giving them the time and the structure to apply what they're learning immediately to their own presentations.
I have some notes on how to improve the workshop, but I'm super happy with the result. I'd love to do this workshop with more teams, so if you know anyone who might be interested, get in touch!
Engineer Your Talks: Brainstorming Talk Ideas
I delivered my new online workshop, Engineer Your Talks: Brainstorming Talk Ideas, at the end of July. This interactive workshop was focused on my 4-step RRRR framework for generating talk ideas. It was my first time hosting a public workshop like this, and I'm so happy with how it went!
I again created a workshop handbook like the one mentioned above, with all the exercises and prompts collated together so that attendees could reflect on their own process and try out techniques to discover their ideal talk topics.
Here's what Rozeri, one of the attendees, had to say about it:
What I love, though, is that attendees learned not only from me but also from each other. As part of the workshop, I set up breakout rooms for attendees to discuss their topics and processes, and it was great to see the conversations and ideas that came out of this. Since then, I've heard that some of the attendees have followed up with each other, to explore ideas further and give each other feedback!
Couldn't make the workshop? I'll be repeating this again in October! I've already made a few changes (for starters, extending it from 90 minutes to 2 hours) and am excited to bring another group of awesome attendees together!
Engineer Your Talks: Brainstorming Talk Ideas Workshop
When: September 30th 17:00-19:00 UK/BST
1:1 Speaker Coaching
I'm continuing to do my 1:1 coaching sessions with clients, and it's been lovely to see how their skills and confidence develop over our sessions. This month, the sessions varied: we explored how to get the messaging of your talks right, how to identify the right audience, how to collate all the different ideas for your talk and then how to turn that into a story structure that works for you and your audience.
It's also been nice to hear how these coaching sessions have not only helped clients with their speaking skills but also allowed them to apply them to other areas like stakeholder management and preparing for interviews. It's all about asking yourself the right questions to understand, distill, and clarify what you are trying to communicate, regardless of the communication format.
So if you're interested in exploring how to improve your speaking or communication skills, reach out to me at melinda@seckington.com for an initial intro call.
Tech Ladies Dinner Roundtable (TLDR)
I organised the 3rd TLDR at the start of July, and this time we met at Bone Daddies near Bond Street. Again we had an awesome group of 9 women coming together to get to know each other, and share what we’re up to and what challenges we’re facing.
I love bringing all these brilliant women together, having fascinating conversations, and helping them build new connections. Everyone has such different perspectives and backgrounds—I love being able to learn from each person and support them in return.
I've been ramping up the TLDR dinners for August, and got more things planned for the group. If you're interested in joining, here's the LinkedIn group.
Events I've Attended
- I'm glad to see that London Web Standards is back! I had a great time speaking there and was thrilled to present my Level Up talk. It's one of my favourite talks, focusing on how we can apply game design principles to create better internal cultures.
- On the 3rd of July, I attended my first She Bytes Back, a meet-up aimed at women in tech to take up space, lean in for support, and embrace bold action. I had so many lovely conversations, plus the talks were all fascinating!
- This month, I also attended the Women in Engineering Leadership breakfast event at Monzo. Joy Sun spoke about Monzo's Payments teams, and Marissa Mocenigo talked about managing stress as a manager. The talks were followed by a panel discussion with women engineering leaders, who discussed their journeys and challenges. All while enjoying a lovely breakfast!
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 finally got around to watching Watchmen, and a) I'm annoyed with myself for not watching this sooner, and b) I'm surprised that in the 5 years since it came out, I didn't get spoiled about any of it. It's so good! I appreciate how it takes the original story from the 80s and adapts it to create a commentary on the current state of the world. I started watching this before the riots here in the UK kicked off, and it's a stark reminder of how things have still not changed enough.
- I loved the first two seasons of The Bear, so I was hoping to love season 3 as well. It's got some great anxiety-inducing episodes, with some of the best acting I've seen in a while. But, what I loved about the first two seasons is that those frantic "everything is going wrong" episodes was balanced with episodes that were happy, relaxed, full of slow, gorgeous food cinematography and chill music.
- As a Marvel fan (even after some of the latest movies) and a Hugh Jackman fan, I had to see Deadpool & Wolverine. I also rewatched the previous two Deadpool movies to make sure I didn't miss any of the recurring jokes. Irreverent and ridiculous, but fun. The latest installment manages to pay homage to the X-Men movies, while simultaneously poking fun at them. I loved the banter between Reynolds and Jackman, and you can just see how much fun they have playing these characters.
- Book-wise, my favourite read of this month was The Prison Healer trilogy by Lynette Noni. This was a young adult fantasy with lots of twists, character development and a good story.
- I also read Spelunking Through Hell and Backpacking Through Bedlam by Seanan McGuire, books 11 and 12 in her Cryptid series. I love McGuire's worlds, cause while each book is stand-alone, you can see the story puzzle pieces that she's placed early on and that she's cleverly plotted the red-line storylines from the very beginning.
- Finally, I have to mention the opening ceremony of The Olympics. I loved that they tried to do something a bit different, using the Seine to showcase parts of Paris. From a storytelling point of view, it was a clever way to bring Paris to life and make the city itself the main character. I think they were super ambitious, though, and the execution just didn't quite work, mostly because of the rain and the timing issues. There were too many moments where the audience had to guess what was happening or where certain moments went on longer than they should have. A good show (be it an opening ceremony, an awards ceremony or a conference) needs to flow nicely from one segment to the other, and that was missing from this opening ceremony.
