Filling the Vessel: Robert 'Uncle Bob' Martin on the Craft of Performance and Clean Coders
Filling the Vessel: Robert 'Uncle Bob' Martin on the Craft of Performance and Clean Coders
🚀 Dive into the world of software craftsmanship with Robert Martin! 🌐 In this video, Robert shares his insights on teaching and presenting, emphasizing the importance of creativity, personality, and engaging with audiences. 🎥 Watch as Robert takes you on a journey through his approach to creating engaging and informative content. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the most influential voices in software craftsmanship! 🌟 #softwarecraftsmanship #teaching #presenting #RobertMartin #engagingcontent
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm Mike with UGtastic. I'm here again at SCNA. I'm sitting down with the inimitable Uncle Bob Martin and you might know that he's written these books or created the solid principles and written the Clean Coder, which was a very well-received book on understanding how to write and design software well. And now you're doing a series of videos called The Clean Coder. Clean Coders. Clean Coders, excuse me. And you have your bracelet. You reach out to and try to teach in a variety of ways. You speak, you write, you blog, and you even tweet once or twice. Sometimes. You're trying to teach in these concepts in a broad spectrum and I know you've gone and spoken in user groups as well. So you hit a lot of media. I try to cover it, yeah. Yeah, so what is that like and what drove you to create The Clean Coders? Oh, well, what is it like?
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
It keeps me busy. I fly all over the doggone place and give talks and yell at people and encourage them to be professional and talk about solid principles and techniques and so on. I love to be creative. It's something that thrills me when I can make something from nothing. And so I make articles and I make books and I make software and I make videos now. I got into the videos because there was obviously this new way to communicate with people. It gives us this way of doing videos and the tools for creating videos have gotten so incredibly powerful that I thought one day, you know, I should just make a different kind of video, not the typical kind of screencast, but instead a scripted, produced, edited video. And I taught myself all the tools and I got bought some cameras and I actually put first two I did I threw away and then finally got into the zone and produced a video that I thought was really good and encouraged my son to work with me to put together a website clean coders dot com. And we put the videos up on that website and we've been selling like hotcakes frankly. They're doing very well. But it's just another creative outlet. Just another way for me to spread my message around the world. So, so it's not just about wanting to, it's not just the message. A lot of it is creative. That you can, you can have fun with it. You can do, because you do some campy things. I have a blast with it. Holy crap. You do little campy things. Yeah, I do. So, but it's, it's, one of the things though that I think is interesting about it and it's what kind of drove me to create this eutastic as well is that it takes what a lot of people only deliver through Twitter or written work which can be dry and it really depends on the interpretation of the reader. So, it varies when you do a video and that's one of the drivers for this whole series is being able to see and hear and watch the, the, the. Body language. The body language. The emotions. Face language. The sound of the voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a very wide bandwidth communications medium that you, there's a whole bunch of different ways to communicate ideas. And the more different ways you use to communicate ideas, the more the ideas get across.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Right.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
So, a screencast is fairly one dimensional. A blog is pretty one dimensional but a video has just got millions of different ways that you can present cool ideas.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
So, you can, but you also get a better idea of, of that, of that person.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Well, there's definitely personality involved.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Of course, that's been my intent all along is to produce these videos that are dripping with personality.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Well, and that, you, you are well known for your speaking being very effervescent. Uh. Is it, is a nice way of.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Or animated or something. Animated.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
I have pitied camera operators that had to try to attract you on stage as I tried to take pictures of you during one of my code camps. One of my sports is to drive them completely insane.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
I, I have a, a series of pictures that were just blurs. That's, that's all they were. Um. Uh. But, you know, another goal of this, uh, video series is to help people that are learning how to speak as well. Um. Um. So, we talked about that we're focused on user groups and speakers. Mm. Um. So, people, I've had people like Corey Haynes, I interviewed him. And he said that he actually, and I forgot to say this during the pre-interview, but it just occurred to me is that he said, um, that he studied the way you present and the way you engage an audience. Um, is that something that is always been in your personality or is that something that over. No, I was born with that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Um, and I'm not exactly sure why. Um, but from, you know, age five, uh, I've never been afraid of audiences. I like to engage them. I do better with audiences than I do with individuals.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Which is probably one of my pathologies. Um, but yeah, it's just something that I have this innate love of getting on stage and entertaining a big lot of people.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Yeah, and that's, when you say entertaining, when I interviewed Brian Laos, he was talking about when you get up, you only have a certain amount of time. Yep. And you have to figure out a way to get a message through to the people in the audience who might have been there for several hours and they're tired and they're kind of checking out a little bit. But waking them up, getting them, and maybe you get one or two points across that leads them to go off and do a little bit more research.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Has that been kind of similar to what your method is? Do you want to introduce a few concepts?
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
There's, there's a few major points that you want to make and you want to make it in a way that, that keeps everybody engaged and everyone watching and interested and absorbed. There's a song, I can't remember the artist right now, but the, one of the words in the song is out there, up there on the stage, every ounce of energy you try to give away.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Is that the, is that ABBA song, I think?
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
It's not ABBA. No, no, no, no. It's, um, Bob Seger. I know, well, we'll, we'll, we'll, I'll do that in an after notes. I'll find out. It's a Seger song.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
And, and, and there's a lot of accuracy in that. On stage, it's all about energy and you try to put as much energy out as you can, uh, to engage the audience and, and deliver the message that you're trying to deliver. And, uh, you alluded to about, it's sometimes easier to talk to an audience than it is sometimes to talk to an individual. I'll admit that one of the things that also drove me to do this is that I had trouble engaging people directly, but by creating a, a format of, a, a, it was easier for me to approach somebody and say. Yes.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
These are the things I want to talk about it and learn more about, but by not just doing it for myself, I'm able to show other people that it becomes not so greedy.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
But it was initially, you're not the first person to describe that putting on a persona for an audience. Sometimes as software developers, we're, we tend to more turn to the inside of our head. And then we come to these conferences and speak and, and share, and we have to kind of put on a mask, so to speak. Yeah, I suppose there's a mask or, or something there. Um, it's a safe format. Um, I, I can get up on stage and I know exactly what to do. I know I can engage the crowd. I understand. They're all there to listen to me. It's a safe format. It's a lot like being a bartender.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
You know, a bartender is a very safe relationship to have with someone because they're going to love you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Especially if you fill their bill, beer up. A little bit.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Just make sure that beer is, and they'll hand it, they're going to love you.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Robert Martin
conference speaking and presentation skills
Same, same thing with being on stage. Just make sure you fill that vessel up.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down. You're welcome. Appreciate it.