Monthly Roundup - November 2024

Melinda Seckington

Dec 4, 2024 — 7 min read

Hello again. It's been a while. I didn't mean to not blog for 2 months, but it's been a busy and challenging few months. I always knew October would be extra busy cause of the amount I was travelling for conferences and having to prepare the talks for those conferences. But on top of that, the first week of October, my cat Dusty got sick, and a month later, he passed away. It's especially tough cause I still feel I'm processing the loss of his brother earlier in the year. I miss them both so much.

So yeah, blogging is one of the things that fell off my radar during the past two months. But I will try to get back into a rhythm of writing again cause I still have too many ideas to share with you all.

While this is technically titled my November roundup, this post will actually mention my highlights from September, October, and November.

Work I’ve Done

Let's start with talking about my online workshops:
- In September, I repeated my Engineer Your Talks: Brainstorming Talk Ideas workshop and turned it into a longer 2-hour workshop. Again, it was great to see attendees come together, brainstorm talk ideas and share them with each other. I love the workshop handbook I've created for this, and it's incredible to see how much it's helping attendees. Several of them have since gotten their talks accepted at conferences! If you want to join, I'll be rerunning this workshop next week!
- I also launched the second in the series, Engineer Your Talks: Writing Talk Proposals, and did the first one of this last week! This workshop focused on writing great talk descriptions, choosing good talk titles, and learning how to navigate the entire CFP process. I've simplified the process by looking at various frameworks to help with each step, putting more structure and repeatability into the whole process. The initial feedback has been great, so I can't wait to rerun this workshop.
- I've got plans to launch the 3rd and 4th of the series (Developing Your Talk Idea and Structuring Your Story) in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned! Sign up here if you want to get updated when new workshops go live.
Next to that, I've also started working with a new client on some fractional engineering management work. The past few weeks have focused on identifying areas of improvement, interviewing all the team members to explore the current team culture and how the team works together, and then making practical recommendations for improving those areas. It's been a great project to get involved in cause I love looking at team processes around career development, feedback and goal setting.
This month, I've worked with several coaching clients on improving the story structure of their talks and practising their delivery and stage presence. It was great to see the finished talks! I saw one speaker live at a meetup, and I watched the recorded video of another speaker's talk. I love that I get to work with these brilliant folks and help improve the stories they want to tell!
I've also been working on a few other things I can't quite share yet! But stay tuned to find out more.

Events I’ve Attended

The last few months were mostly busy in terms of my own speaking at conferences and meetups. Here's what I've been up to:

ReactJS Girls on September 19th: I gave my Level Up talk about how to get inspiration from how video games keep their players engaged and learning and to apply that to our engineering teams. It's a talk I love giving, and the response at ReactJS Girls was lovely.
On September 25th, I hosted the LeadDev London meetup! I'm more comfortable with speaking than MCing, so it was fun getting to do this for a meetup that I love. I feel like MCing is more like improv than a talk, which isn't where my strengths lie, but it's great to throw myself in and learn how to do this better!
Then in October, my conference season started! I first got to attend HelloStavanger from 16th-17th October. It was my first time in Norway, and I had a great time. I did my Refactor Yourself talk, which was all about applying refactoring to your own behaviours and habit loops.
A week later I took the train up to Edinburgh for HaggisRuby on October 24th. I got to put together a brand new talk, Developing Resilience, all about understanding resilience and your emotions! This was a hard talk to give given that I was dealing with my own resilience since Dusty was sick, but it made the talk all the more important to me. It's really a skill that we can all take time to work on and improve.
Finally, I got to go to Malmo in Sweden for Øredev from 6th-8th November. I again gave my Refactor Yourself talk, and was pleasantly surprised by how well attended my talk was! The room fit about 250 people seated but folks were standing all around the space, which was brilliant! The entire conference was super impressive though, and I'm definitely going to try to attend again next year!
I spent last Wednesday evening at the Fractional Consulting Community unconference, and it reminded me why I’ve loved unconferences like this. Doing a fractional role can sometimes feel a bit lonely, but chatting with others in similar roles showed me how many of us are tackling similar challenges. It’s brilliant to share ideas, swap stories, and feel more connected. And it’s given me ideas of things to try out and do!

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. This is going to be extra long than normal cause we're covering multiple months here!

I finished re-reading all of the Stormlight Archive and read The Sunlit Man, which means that, for once, I am entirely up to date with all stories in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. The 5th book of the Stormlight Archive is out this week, and I can't wait for it. I don't think any other book series compares in terms of epicness and scale.
I love Emily Henry's romances cause they're always more than just your typical romance story. Her latest book, Funny Story, is no different. This time, it's about two people who start fake dating cause their exes left them for each other. Henry always manages to balance the poignant with the ridiculous.
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree was just a comforting read. It's a prequel to Legends & Latte, which I adored, and with this prequel, we get to see another town and another shop that needs saving.
I read Assistant to the Villain and its sequel, Apprentice to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer. Sunshine heroine meets grumpy-but-actually-sweet villain-love-interest. I love the banter and character development in this series. And there are just so many laugh-out-loud moments; I feel happy reading these.
I've been drawn to many whimsical and comforting books, and both The Dallergut Dream Department Store and The Full Moon Coffee Shop fit that bill. They're both translations (the first from Korean, the second from Japanese) and they both look at dreams and wishes and what we want from life.
Continuing the whimsical reads: The Wishing Game by Meg Shafer. This has gotten quite conflicting reviews, but I enjoyed the hopefulness of the book. For anyone who had a beloved book series as a kid and wished the world in it was real.
I've gotten sucked into playing Dreamlight Valley. It's basically Disney's version of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, but with all your favourite Disney characters. You get to do a myriad of tasks, like gardening, planting vegetables, befriending critters and mining for gems, all while finishing tasks for characters like Mickey, Moana and Ariel. What I love most is the interactions between characters from different movies, like Stitch pranking Donald Duck or Remy from Ratatouille and Tiana discussing recipes. Add to that the soothing and satisfying sound design and music (harvesting vegetables is like popping bubblewrap) and you have one of the most relaxing games to play.
In terms of theatre, my highlight last month was going to see Hadestown. It's amazing. It takes the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and gives a musical take on it. The cast and songs are just brilliant, and I love the finale. This musical is going to stick with me for a long, long time. I've seen it too recently to say it's my favourite musical ever, but given how much I'm listening to the soundtrack now, it's fast climbing my top 10 list.
Talking about favourite musicals, I went to see the movie version of Wicked and it was everything I could have hoped for. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are brilliant as Elphaba and Glinda, and their vocals are amazing. The set design and costume design made Oz really come to life. And I loved the choreography and cinematography, adding things that you just can't do in a stage production. Plus I appreciated the little nods to the Wizard of Oz, as well as the foreshadowing of future events. I can't wait to see Part 2 next year!
My highlight of the London Film Festival this year was Memoir of A Snail. It's a stop-motion animation from the same team that did Mary and Max, which I also loved. It's about a lonely hoarder of ornamental snails, and the various ups and downs of her life.
In terms of TV, I've got 3 highlights for the last 3 months. The first is Blue Eye Samurai, an animation about a warrior looking for vengeance. I'm not saying more cause I don't want to spoil it, but it has some of the best character development I've seen in any TV show. Episode 5 "The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride" is just a masterclass in storytelling.
I loved the 4th season of Only Murders In The Building. Yes, the characters are cheesy and sometimes annoying, but I love their banter. And, for once, I predicted who did it!
And finally, I loved Agatha All Along. Marvel has been a bit hit and miss for me recently, but Agatha reminded me that they can create some fantastic characters and storytelling. I loved all the different witches and each of their story arches. Episode 7 "Death's Hand In Mine" was perfectly done and another episode I'll keep thinking about. The Ballad of the Witches Road is also going to be karaoke staple for me from now on!

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