Nickolas Means likes to tell stories. His conference talks [1] often center around a curious anecdote, but he deftly weaves both technical and organizational relevancy into them. Nickolas talks about how he builds a talk from conception to execution and goes over some fundamentals of good presentation slides. The goal is to provide a narrative without overwhelming the user with too much textual content.

He continues with advice for novices and experts alike, including how to craft a CFP that will increase the likelihood of your talk being accepted. He suggests that new speakers choose a larger conference to speak at, rather than a smaller one, as they have more capacity to provide mentoring. Even if you're not a Ruby or Rails developer, their conferences tend to be very welcoming, and he suggests taking a look at rubyconferences.com to find one that fits.

Links from this episode

1. Nickolas' conference talks
2. Nickolas Means on Confreaks TV
3. How to Talk to Developers by Ben Orenstein
4. What Your Conference Proposal Is Missing by Sarah Mei
5. Better talk proposals in 3 easy steps