As I’ve mentioned a few times by now, the way to get me to show up at your event is to invite me. The easiest (i.e. cheapest) way is to hold your event in the Seattle area so that my travel expenses are effectively zero; I just use my bus pass. The folks at TechEd China 2010, on the other hand, had to fly me all the way out to Beijing, which is where I’ve been this week. Preparing these talks is a lot of work, because each one is different. It’s not like I have a “stock presentation” that I give over and over. So even if you invite me, I may decline because I simply don’t have the time to write up a new presentation for your event, and if your event is outside the Seattle area, I may decline because the travel would take me away for too long. (The TechEd China folks actually invited me last year, but I already had accepted an out-of-town invitation and couldn’t really afford two out-of-town presentations in one year.) Anyway, if you can read Chinese, then you can check out the TechEd China 2010 Web site — nobody told me that crossed arms was the official speaker pose of TechEd China 2010 — my speaker biography and the talk description. I can’t read Chinese, so I’m trusting the translators to have done a good job. I’ve found that a good way to salvage content that I’ve deleted from the queue (because the topic draws out flame comments) is to use them in talks and presentations instead. It turns out that the people who actually show up for a talk are much more polite than those who just post snarky comments from their mother’s basement. I think the fact that you have to be snarky in person removes the veil of anonymity and makes you more accountable for what you say.
And since I know you’re going to ask:
- I’m giving the talk in English.
- I don’t know whether the talk is going to be recorded.
- The talk is being given on December 2, even though this entry is dated December 1. That’s because it will already be December 2 in China.
[Raymond is currently away, but he wrote this entry just now.]
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