I'm writing a book on career growth for developers, leadership as an individual contributor, and big-picture thinking skills for developers. Subscribe for thoughts on development, leadership, and writing. I'll be sharing updates on the book and excerpts of what I've written so far. I'm also an Art-o-mat artist, creating drawings of mysterious creatures, and I will share occasional glimpses of my art here. You can find out more about the book and the art at beyondwritingcode.com.
Ideas for my talk, issue #17 of Beyond Writing Code
Published 26 days ago • 3 min read
Beyond Writing Code #17
Sept 9, 2025
Walked home from the cafe the other day. By the time I got home, I had five ideas to make my LeadDev NYC talk better. I'll share all five here, plus two more I've had since.
Walk and talk
Rehearsing my talk while I'm walking is entertaining. I put in my earbuds and pretend I'm on a work conference call so people don't think I'm odd for pontificating to nobody in particular.
There are two downsides. First, my nervous speaking habit is pacing, so this isn't good practice in trying to conquer that habit. Second, I need to either interrupt myself to take notes, or I need to try to remember what I decided as soon as I get where I'm going.
You might not expect rehearsing without my slides to be a plus, but I like it. Abandoning the slides can show me that I want to structure it differently.
But I didn't take notes while I was walking, so when I got home, I grabbed index cards, and I wrote out one concept on each.
Photo by Kate Trysh on Unsplash, and congratulations to Kate for taking a photo of a pile of blank index cards and having it be useful to someone
1. Who am I and why you should listen to me
People need to know why they should trust this strange Leaf person. I will have already been introduced by the host, and my name and info will be on the screen, so I can start my talk with:
"After 20 years as a developer and tech lead--"
Boom. Not even done with the first sentence, and I've established context and credentials. It's a ten minute talk, I don't need more than that.
2. What are the stakes
The "why you should care" section of the talk. What's at stake here? It's the main challenge that I'm facing in the story I'm telling.
3. What I learned
The practical takeaways for my talk, presented as lessons I learned along the way.
4. Why it's worth doing
What do they get out of following those takeaways.
They are the deeper "whys" that get to my true purpose in telling the story. A good story often has transformation in it, this is where the transformation comes into the story.
This is also the "where I get the most real" part of the presentation. My favorite part :)
I wrote this down the other day:
Vulnerably sharing what I've learned, in order to help others be happier in their work lives, is my whole mission.
5. Moments
I have three moments I want to zoom in on with some details. I think I'll only have time for two of them, but that's okay. One at the beginning, one at the transition point closer to the end.
Zooming in on a few moments helps bring the emotion into the story, and makes it more of a story and less of an academic lecture.
Things I've thought about since
What's the transformation I want for my listeners? I can talk about how my thoughts changed, do I want to take them on that same journey? Or is there another purpose to my story?
"Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them." I came to understand this in a new way the other day. I was thinking this was: provide an outline, provide the content, then recap. And that might work, in some circumstances.
But the first "tell them what you're going to tell them" isn't necessarily about revealing everything and then repeating yourself in the second telling. It's maybe more about giving your reader a sense of what to expect, rather than providing your content multiple times.
Example: this email. My first paragraph tells you what I'm going to tell you. It doesn't list out my tips. It just says there are five and then some.
How can my title slide make people curious? Right now, my title slide is pretty boring. "Us vs. Them Thinking" followed by a subtitle I keep changing my mind about, plus my name and website. Ho hum.
Drop me a note
I would love to hear from you. Hit reply and let me know what's on your mind.
I know several of you wrote to me this past week, and I haven't answered any of you yet, because it's been that kind of week. I see you. I haven't forgotten you.
This newsletter is approximately weekly. In addition, I post to my blog on my website, which also appears on Medium and Substack.
I'm writing a book on career growth for developers, leadership as an individual contributor, and big-picture thinking skills for developers. Subscribe for thoughts on development, leadership, and writing. I'll be sharing updates on the book and excerpts of what I've written so far. I'm also an Art-o-mat artist, creating drawings of mysterious creatures, and I will share occasional glimpses of my art here. You can find out more about the book and the art at beyondwritingcode.com.