blog/content/posts/experience-as-speaker-at-meetup.md

+++
title = "My experience as a speaker at meetup groups"
date = 2018-10-08
+++

After joining the first meetup group and going on a regular basis, never thought about ending up being a speaker at those meetups. Joined the [rustox](https://www.meetup.com/rustox/) meetup group in May 2017 and have been a regular since then. This meetup group was started by Ragini and Saifi, two wonderful people. They used to conduct this meetup every Sunday morning and every Sunday morning ended up attending these meetups. Learned a lot from both of them. So when in the end of January 2018, they had to leave Bengaluru for a while for working on a project which they had taken for their own company, was asked to become the organizer and speaker. Had never thought of being a speaker and ended up speaking almost every other weekend.

Saifi had envisioned a series on Rust topics for beginners. The goals for 2018 are outlined [here](https://medium.com/@rustox/rust-bangalore-2018-goals-f1f16397cd47). However, it felt after a while that catering just to beginners and with people always coming on-board, no progress can be beyond a certain point. There had already been a beginners series in 2017. With that in mind and after talking with Raj, who was now the organizer for sister group [FOSS Cafe](https://www.meetup.com/fosscafe/), it was decided that there would be a fundamental topic one week and the next week some crate or project would serve as the topic of discussion or presentation. And this would alternate and keep on continuing. This also seemed in-line with the bi-modal approach which Saifi had envisioned. The first project looked at was [Gutenberg](https://www.getgutenberg.io/), a static website engine in Rust, which is also what this blog has been generated with (at the time of writing at least). On the way along with fundamental topics, crates/projects like Rocket, Diesel, Crossbeam, mio, tokio, and futures were covered.

There is an excellent write-up [here](https://dev.to/aspittel/public-speaking-as-a-developer-2ihj) by [Ali Spittel](https://twitter.com/ASpittel) on why you should consider public speaking as a developer. Personally, have had found two motivations for organizing and speaking at meetup groups. First, it acts as a great way to reinforce what has been learned in the process of preparing for a meetup talk. It can also be something one has been interested in learning and having spend a certain amount of time on a topic, decided to speak on it. This is what was being done for the [Functional Programmers Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Bangalore-Functional-Programmers-Meetup/) as well, where I frequently speak on a topic in Haskell. Often I found, that the understanding has improved after giving the talk or I didn't understand something, but, during the discussion process it became much more clear. Or someone from the audience has helped understand. Second, I have met some interesting and wonderful people along the way. It's always nice to meet people who are passionate about something and spend their time on learning and picking it up. People with different experiences from different domains.

However, it's not all hunky dory. One of the challenges with organizing such meetups is engaging people. Am pretty sure am not great at this, however, I try. Different people have different interests and it's not always possible to cater to everyone. Also, Rust though a great language has a steeper learning curve in comparison to something like Python. Unless one is willing to invest some time on a continuous basis, it might be difficult to pick up depending on what kind of a background one is coming from.

Sometimes, one gets asked a question which might be difficult to answer objectively. The question was "What's the killer app for Rust?" or it was something definitely similar. Rust stands on the basis of what it offers and purely on technical merit, not to mention the great community around it. Hats off to Mozilla, Steve Klabnik, Aaron Turon and various others who have been working on Rust. Another difficulty is only one third of the people who RSVP actually turn up and having a consistent set of 10-15 members willing to speak or contribute code wise has been next to impossible.

Now, that 2018 is coming to a close, am wondering what the plan for 2019 should be to take this forward and improve on what has been done in 2018. Having seen this [talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xyZeovFqCA) recently, think going forward, should try and understand how something like mio or Diesel actually works and has been implemented. The aim should to be producers and contributors and not just consumers. And last but not the least a big thanks to [HackerEarth](https://www.hackerearth.com/) who have been forthcoming in providing us the venue for meetups in last few months and also to [91SpringBoard](http://www.91springboard.com/) and [ThoughtFactory](https://www.axisbank.com/thoughtfactory/index.html) where a lot of earlier meetups were conducted.
Initial commit for blog based on Zola 2024-12-11 20:25:15 +01:00			`+++`
			`title = "My experience as a speaker at meetup groups"`
			`date = 2018-10-08`
			`+++`

			After joining the first meetup group and going on a regular basis, never thought about ending up being a speaker at those meetups. Joined the [rustox](https://www.meetup.com/rustox/) meetup group in May 2017 and have been a regular since then. This meetup group was started by Ragini and Saifi, two wonderful people. They used to conduct this meetup every Sunday morning and every Sunday morning ended up attending these meetups. Learned a lot from both of them. So when in the end of January 2018, they had to leave Bengaluru for a while for working on a project which they had taken for their own company, was asked to become the organizer and speaker. Had never thought of being a speaker and ended up speaking almost every other weekend.

			Saifi had envisioned a series on Rust topics for beginners. The goals for 2018 are outlined [here](https://medium.com/@rustox/rust-bangalore-2018-goals-f1f16397cd47). However, it felt after a while that catering just to beginners and with people always coming on-board, no progress can be beyond a certain point. There had already been a beginners series in 2017. With that in mind and after talking with Raj, who was now the organizer for sister group [FOSS Cafe](https://www.meetup.com/fosscafe/), it was decided that there would be a fundamental topic one week and the next week some crate or project would serve as the topic of discussion or presentation. And this would alternate and keep on continuing. This also seemed in-line with the bi-modal approach which Saifi had envisioned. The first project looked at was [Gutenberg](https://www.getgutenberg.io/), a static website engine in Rust, which is also what this blog has been generated with (at the time of writing at least). On the way along with fundamental topics, crates/projects like Rocket, Diesel, Crossbeam, mio, tokio, and futures were covered.

			There is an excellent write-up [here](https://dev.to/aspittel/public-speaking-as-a-developer-2ihj) by [Ali Spittel](https://twitter.com/ASpittel) on why you should consider public speaking as a developer. Personally, have had found two motivations for organizing and speaking at meetup groups. First, it acts as a great way to reinforce what has been learned in the process of preparing for a meetup talk. It can also be something one has been interested in learning and having spend a certain amount of time on a topic, decided to speak on it. This is what was being done for the [Functional Programmers Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Bangalore-Functional-Programmers-Meetup/) as well, where I frequently speak on a topic in Haskell. Often I found, that the understanding has improved after giving the talk or I didn't understand something, but, during the discussion process it became much more clear. Or someone from the audience has helped understand. Second, I have met some interesting and wonderful people along the way. It's always nice to meet people who are passionate about something and spend their time on learning and picking it up. People with different experiences from different domains.

			However, it's not all hunky dory. One of the challenges with organizing such meetups is engaging people. Am pretty sure am not great at this, however, I try. Different people have different interests and it's not always possible to cater to everyone. Also, Rust though a great language has a steeper learning curve in comparison to something like Python. Unless one is willing to invest some time on a continuous basis, it might be difficult to pick up depending on what kind of a background one is coming from.

			Sometimes, one gets asked a question which might be difficult to answer objectively. The question was "What's the killer app for Rust?" or it was something definitely similar. Rust stands on the basis of what it offers and purely on technical merit, not to mention the great community around it. Hats off to Mozilla, Steve Klabnik, Aaron Turon and various others who have been working on Rust. Another difficulty is only one third of the people who RSVP actually turn up and having a consistent set of 10-15 members willing to speak or contribute code wise has been next to impossible.

			Now, that 2018 is coming to a close, am wondering what the plan for 2019 should be to take this forward and improve on what has been done in 2018. Having seen this [talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xyZeovFqCA) recently, think going forward, should try and understand how something like mio or Diesel actually works and has been implemented. The aim should to be producers and contributors and not just consumers. And last but not the least a big thanks to [HackerEarth](https://www.hackerearth.com/) who have been forthcoming in providing us the venue for meetups in last few months and also to [91SpringBoard](http://www.91springboard.com/) and [ThoughtFactory](https://www.axisbank.com/thoughtfactory/index.html) where a lot of earlier meetups were conducted.