Danielle Summers

Wow. Just wow.
My last post was in May! Time really has flown!

In the time since my last post, I’ve given three talks – each on a different topic, joined a podcast, had a two week vacation in Crete and taken on another mentee! Oh, and we built a garden shed. Can’t forget the shed! In fact the last couple of months have been so busy I’ve even forgotten to update my calendar on here, so that’s entirely my bad!

So let’s wind back the clock a ltitle. First, I had the pleasure of joining Mitchell Thompson from Evolution recruitment agency who hosted a podcast on the Talent Goldmine, alongside Chris Cooper from Rougemont Security, Louise McMahon from Street Group, and David McBride from Innes & Oliver. We discussed some very interesting topics, from overcoming biases, understanding misconseptions and best practices to recruit the best diverse talent. It was a truly fabulous discussion and we explored a lot of areas in quite a lot of detail. I’ll drop a new post when that podcast goes live!

Next, I was invited to join DevOps Exchange who ran a series of talks as part of DTX in Manchester at the end of May. If you’re not aware, DTX is one of the largest tech events in northern England and it’s always worth a visit. Prior to my session, I also had the pleasure of watching Q&A panels that included former colleagues and managers, as well as the chance to catch up with them and shoot the breeze. My talk was on Developer Culture – and more specifically, the types of culture that pits software and devops engineers against each other. I explored multiple examples from my past, what went wrong and how I broke down the challenges to give everybody the opportunity to collaborate in a constructive and healthy way. In the image above you can see two of the hosts and three others who gave fantastic talks, including my good friend Anna (centre) who dug into K8s!

This has taken us right up to the 22nd of May, leaving me just 5 days before I fly out to Crete in order to get my next talk finished off, recorded and shared across Redgate. Sounds wild, but there was a reason why I rushed this through. My talk was focused on tips and tricks to help improve how we give a presentation or present something in person. It covered the manifestations of stress and anxiety, and ways to cope with that. It covered ways to plan and prepare, how to rehearse, and how to feel comfortable in front of others. This was especially valuable, as immediately after my vacation, Redgate ran ‘LevelUp’ – a company wide conference where people in-house give presentations on topics of their choosing. More on that later though.

Here’s a link to my post containing the video – figure it’s better than embedding it in this monster post!

And then we’re off to Crete for two weeks of sun, sea and rediculously good food!

Less than two weeks after landing back in the UK, I was at Redgate’s LevelUp conference. My original plan was to re-run the slide deck I recorded however I had an epiphony on the plane home – I could embed a clip from my recording into a talk, meaning I was presening a presentation on presentating that contained a presentation on presenting. Absolutely insane, I know, but it was too meta not to. So I started a whole new slide deck from scratch with a different direction and set to it the minute I landed.

This talk was focused on the art of public speaking. Yeah, I know, a bit presumptuous for a relative rookie to be giving a talk like this, but it’s founded in all the research and experience I’ve gained giving public presentations. First, I explored how tone and intonation can say more than the words we speak, then moved on to how we use our bodies and fill the space in which we’re presenting, then I finished off by covering filler words, why we use them and how to utilise silence instead of saying ‘erm’ or ‘ahh’. There’s no recording of this talk, which is a shame, however I’m likely to give this talk again in the future as I really loved how it flowed and the feedback I got tells me it was really well received too!

What’s coming up

So with so much already done, the question really is what have I got coming up?
In terms of public events, not a whole lot right now. There’s an event scheduled for October, and that’s about it. I’d very much like to get some more events scheduled for the second half of the year, but right now I’m enjoying the lul in my calendar. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m just sat around twiddling my thumbs, I’ve got 3 social events with work this month alone!

I’ve also got several posts planned for the next few months, including a dive into the anatomy of a scam, ways to build inclusive and blame free cultures, tips on supporting neurodiverse people and a wonderful collab on positive discrimination for women in tech, so watch this space!