Global Diversity CFP Day — Austin edition

Over the weekend, my sister, Dee (a Product Manager at VISA) and I mentored a workshop at the Austin event for Global Diversity CFP Day, a worldwide, day-long event featuring "numerous workshops hosted around the globe encouraging and advising newbie speakers to put together [their] very first talk proposal and share [their] own individual perspective on any subject of interest to people in tech".

Dee and I love collaborating when we can (we've both served on tech panels together here and there), and it was great to mentor and share our different ways of approaching public speaking. We have different ways that we approach topic ideas, framing a talk, gathering feedback, creating day-of-speaking routines, and addressing audience questions and comments.

I shared a bit on how one approach I take to finding a topic based on the Japanese concept of being, called "ikigai".

Simply, ikigai is about the overlap of a few different areas, that work well in identifying a good speaking topic and also reach a good sense of purpose:

  1. What you love.

  2. What you're good at.

  3. What the world needs.

  4. What you can get paid for.

A Venn diagram from the Toronto Start illustrating the overlaps of the 4 principles of ikigaiFrom Chaaipani



I also spoke about how I use a simplified version of the Scientific Metholody to hypothesize, create a process, test, analyze, and conclude in a talk. It’s sort of an approach I took on the design process in my master’s thesis.

Organizer, Cecy Correa, who also organizes GDI Austin caught of a few moments from the workshop, including a gif of my "teaching arms" flailing around.

If you're looking for speaking resources, there are a few in my first post about public speaking.

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