Conference Speaking And Presentation Skills: Mike Hall Interviews Brad Wilkening | SCNA 2012

Conference Speaking And Presentation Skills: Mike Hall Interviews Brad Wilkening | SCNA 2012

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Meetup with Brad Wilkening, co-founder of DevMind Software, discussing his involvement in community events and the importance of fostering a community of software craftsmen. #softwarecraftsmanship #communitybuilding #devcommunity
The Interviewer

Mike Hall

Interviewer, UGtastic

The Guest

Brad Wilkening

conference speaking and presentation skills

The Conversation

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm Mike with UTEST. I'm here at SCNA again, sitting down with Brad Wilkening, who is a co-founder of DevMind Software. And they're very active in the community, and Brad has been active in the community for a while. He has a Chicago, you co-run the Chicago WebConf, and also the Craftsman Night Loud, and the OpenHack. You just mentioned, and I just learned about that one. So, that's a bunch of events to be involved in. You know, going to meetings already takes up enough time, but running all those meetings, I mean, how do you manage doing all these events? And actually, and also, what is Craftsman Night Loud and OpenHack?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
So, I'll start out with the Chicago WebConf. So, we saw that there's a need in Chicago for a conference that's focused on front-end technologies and design. I think that's a really important area. We think that there's kind of this new position coming out of nowhere called the front-end developer.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And I think we need to foster that. For such design, it's knowing those tools, all the UX, the JavaScript, and the CSS. And knowing how to organize that stuff well can really help your project along, if you will. And so, we saw a need there, and we were like, okay, well, let's give it a try. And we sold out the first year 115 tickets, and then we sold out this year with 300 and something tickets. So, one of the things we try to do with it is we try to keep it less expensive, so it's attainable to people that don't usually assign.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
$75 for the full point?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Yes. And we're sending out that survey, I think, later today or sometime soonish that is going to ask whether or not people really just want to pay more money so we have more room and more, you know, it's easier to spend $5,000 on the food if you had more money to work with.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
But we're, you know, we're bootstrapping it, and so there's a lot of overhead that we kind of have used to. We're iterating. Yes, we are infected. But we're going to do that again next year. It's sometime in the fall. This year it was October 6th, which also happens to be my birthday, which means it's a really terrible birthday. What a very exciting birthday.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
I mean, for a conference, you just kind of want to get her done.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. With my other stuff, it's kind of different than that, though, right?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Like, so I'm with Creston's Night Out. The way that I get people to come to that is I basically just tell them, well, we basically get together and talk shit about our projects. The second I say that to somebody, they're just like, oh, I'm going to that. Yeah, yeah. It sounds like a good time.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
It's cathartic, right?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
You come out, you have a cheeseburger, and you have a good time with it. And it's always fun, you know, no trolling rule. Recruiters have shown up in the past, and we're typically very abusive to them, so they've found that they don't show up anymore. But, you know, we kind of want to keep it like that, where it's all just a bunch of coders in a room kind of hanging out. Occasionally, laptops come out. You know, that's probably one-fifth of the time, but we're totally cool with that as well. It can get as dirty as it needs to. Yeah, well, coders going to code. Yes, coders going to code. Hater's going to hate.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Is that the meme we're pulling from?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah, yeah.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Sure.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
I'm shameless. I label for an insider. That one has, like, 300-something people. It's on Meetup. And that took a while to grow it out, and it's grown over the years. It was originally called Software Craftsman Who Happened to Like Whiskey. And that occurred because I was like, I don't know, maybe some people will join us. It's kind of silly, and I know I have a bunch of friends that drink whiskey and write software, so let's do it. And, like, in the first month we had, like, 50 people that signed up for it, and the attendance was, like, 20 or 30 people every time. So I was like, oh, apparently this is a good idea. Yeah, yeah. So then I kept getting people that were like, hey, you know, I don't like whiskey. I'm like, it doesn't matter. The name's silly. Yeah, yeah. It was really silly.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Did you see how long this game is? Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Software Craftsman Who Happened to Like Whiskey. Nobody ever came up with a name like that where they weren't entirely kidding. But after we got it up to a certain point, basically every month we have at least 20 or 30 people. We get a wide variety, too. It's not just people that are doing the Ruby or the Java. It's people all across the board. One embedded guy comes pretty often, and he's super cool. And, you know, it is literally every possible community that I could think of just coming up. Because it's not tied to, this isn't Ruby Downs who like this. This isn't Pythonists who like beer. It's just craftsmen. And it's a very broad, you know, if you're something that cares about your craft, then come on out.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And it gets pretty nerdy sometimes. But, you know, after about being there for two hours, basically we're all just incoherently talking trash to each other, which is a natural environment for me. And that's one of the important things we sometimes create when we're thinking about our tools or identifying too closely with our tool sets is that when you kind of put syntax away and platform fights away, we all have basically the same interests and the same kind of... We all have the same problems.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
We're the entire same group of people. And, you know, there's always this kind of animosity between the communities that I think is just completely silly. And so I'd say everybody just come to all the meetups. I've been going to the Python ones because they're just fun. And, you know, I learned something about Python and there's something to be learned there.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Does Brian really look forward to every meeting is the greatest meeting ever?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Yes. He is the only other extrovert in Chicago as a software engineer. It's me and Brian Ray. That's our claim to fame, clearly. But you have one other group as well, the open hack.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. So here's where it gets weird, right?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Is that there's this thing that was posted on GitHub and it was openhack. github. com. And we noticed it and we noticed that there wasn't a Chicago one. So we figured the natural response to that is going to be to go, hey, we'll take it.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
So that's what we did.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And it's gone from zero people to, I think it's at like 70 in two weeks. Wow. And I'd like to note also that it's not a GitHub thing, it's just an open hack thing.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And we didn't realize that at the time. We weren't trying to figure out what it was or why it was.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
We were just like, oh, we have a meetup that's kind of like that. Let's try to transverse it into this. And we have another one called open source bug bash.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
But we limit it to all people and they all have to be fairly experienced just to join the group. We ask questions to people that haven't been delivered software. So, yeah, so that's interesting. You have a gated group. So it's like you have to meet a certain threshold. And that's kind of an interesting perspective for a lot of user groups who are trying to figure out how to appeal to people who have gone past. I just interviewed Matt Polito and he talked about always bringing in new blood and having to have introductory topics.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
But how do you satisfy people who have been down the road in a while?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And for open source bug bash, it's kind of a weird thing because one of the reasons that these folks are coming is because it's a smaller group. And they just like smaller groups.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
I talked to Evan Light one time and come to find out he thinks smaller groups are better. The big after party, he didn't like it so much. We ended up back at his hotel room and this is not an inappropriate statement, although anybody that knows me is probably expecting it to come one. But we were there with Aaron Kalin, Corey M. from Trump Club, and just this nice group of people who all just kind of wanted to have some good whiskey and sit around and shoot the shit. And that's kind of the same people that we end up getting minus whiskey plus laptop at open source bug bash. We actually had somebody you interviewed last time, Andy Lester at Chicago Web Comp, you interviewed Andy Lester. And we met Andy there and he's been a cool friend of ours since then.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
He's a very interesting guy.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
On my neck of the woods. Which. Where Jesus lost his shoes.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
We're out there. But yeah, so you're able to have a pretty open thing where just anybody can come into it with the grassman night out. Just, you know, it's kind of an open door policy, but then you have the open hack, which is something that's a little bit more open. But the higher end or more, a little bit more sophisticated group of the open source bug bash, which I'm presuming you're committing code back into open source project.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Is there anything in particular?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Are you focused on-- Oh, no. No. Like, we're just starting to figure that part out. And really what we do, what we're going to do more or less, is we're going to have people write on the board what they're going to hack on and whether or not they're willing to take a pair.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And so somebody comes in and they're fixing a bug with rails. Somebody else walks in and says, oh, yeah, I saw that bug. I want to pair with that dude and knock that one out. So that's basically more or less the way that we try to approach it. Now, open hack, since it's going to have a larger audience, potentially some younger blood and some more junior folks, we're going to have that same format, but we're going to have that same format in an environment where it's going to be pretty reasonable. We're doing it in the brain tree space.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Which I've never been there, but I've heard it's really super awesome and huge. So we're probably going to have a pretty big turnout for those events. And, you know, there's a good reason people are coming there. People are coming there because it is an open source thing and they do want to kind of help out with that stuff.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And have you reached out to any local open source guys or are you just like, oh, this is a cool project. You like this thing. So we want to support it.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
So is it?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
It's anything. It's literally going to be a whiteboard where you write your name and what library you're hacking on. Perhaps, you know, which bug you're going to try to attack. But it's more or less just to, you know, create the environment of approachability for anybody that's hacking on something.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Okay.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
We still don't know how we're going to link that, where that dude is. Kind of put a number on their head. I'm sorry. Let's say that if I walk up the board, I'm like Brad Wilkening working on this. Nobody knows who I am.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
We haven't figured that part out.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
You're like, hey, who's Brad? Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
If it gets over 20, that's going to get a little gnarly.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
So, but going to the, what you talked about with the smaller groups and what Evan said about the smaller groups. So you said you prefer the smaller groups because they're a little bit.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Well, why is that? Why do you prefer, why did Evan say he prefers smaller groups over larger groups?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
Well, I'm going to wholesale the speak for Evan right now.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
I don't have anything funny to say here. So it's not going to be any funny. I'm kidding. So I think it's actually just kind of, it's a dichotomy. It's a natural dichotomy in human behavior. You like to have some quiet time. You like to have some busy time and you need both and both are very healthy and have healthy and have benefits. So if you do both, you're going to be happy with the results of it.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
And you know, that's not a very objective thing to say. I'm basically just saying, yeah, it'll be amazing. But, but more or less, there are also just people that don't function well in larger groups of people. They're going to try to consolidate themselves into a single group. And that is a totally natural introverted thing to do. And even us extroverts like me and Brian Ray are willing to every now and then say, yeah, that was a cool meetup with all five of us.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
You know, and we got a lot done.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
We talked about some cool stuff and who, who cares?
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
But it's, it's always that different environment. I'm just, it's keeping it real. I, I, I, I, I, I, like I said, shameless. Yes. We're most definitely keeping it real as often as possible. Um, but yeah, that's, that's the, the kind of the onset of those, those events. And some people try to use those for hiring, you know, like there's a new one, I forgot the name of it, but it's basically just, it's a recruiting firm that's putting on these presentations that may be great. Um, and we're not kind of doing that. We, we like the effect of people showing up and interacting with each other more than we do staring at the guy talking.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Brad Wilkening conference speaking and presentation skills
We, you know, that's an okay thing from time to time, but none of our groups really, really harness that or give that a hug.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Well, thank you very much for having the time to sit down. Absolutely.