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Best roles or positions for strong speakers?
2 points by throwaway55555 on July 11, 2011 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
Hi,

What are the best roles, positions or job opportunities for a person who is very good at speaking to groups of people (5 to 100, or even higher) and technically inclined?




"Very good". I study professional speakers and, without seeing video of your talks, I can't assume that you are as good as you say you are. DHH is probably the best speaker who is technical and motivational that I've seen. Shaky video: [1]

I am going to assume that you are already on the technical 'speaker circuit'.

However, if you are not on the 'speaker circuit', consider getting on it. Start by submitting talks to various conferences that you could contribute to. High profile, at first, is not that important, you can work your way up there. Once you are accepted at one conference and give an excellent talk, that will make it easier to go to get in to other conferences. And, once you are at the talk, network with the other speakers, become friends. I see a core set of names repeated in the conference ecosystem.

If you are a very good at and enjoy teaching/training, you can travel a lot and get paid reasonably well for one-week gigs.

If you want to go out of the box, consider network marketing as an exercise in building your skills. There are many companies out there. They all have the same basic model (e.g. you don't know many more people than you already know). As a way to improve your fear of rejection, improve your presentation and listening skills, not as a real secondary income stream.

[1] http://onrails.org/2008/05/31/railsconf-2008-david-heinemeie...


Technical Evangelist sounds like a good fit.

i.e. someone who loves the product, knows about the product, and is able to pitch the product in different ways to different audiences (techy users, developers, etc.). This person would also know how to demonstrate the best features of the product.




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