Promoting With 💩

@edent — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 12:39:54 +0000

One of the hardest things about attending conferences with multiple tracks is deciding which talk to go to.

If your friends are talking opposite each other, it is particularly hard.

As a speaker, though, it's even tougher to know you're up against a brilliant speaker. Speaking is hard - speaking to an empty room is... painful.

So, I thought I'd try a little experiment at the recent Hackference Brum. I was giving a talk about Unicode which - let's face it - isn't the most glamorous subject in the world. But, to most people, Unicode == Emoji.

And what's everyone's favourite Emoji?

Yup - I purchased a Big Plushie ?!

Touting your talk at a conference always runs the risk of looking desperate - or simply being awkward. So I decided to ask people if they'd like to take a selfie with my poo. Turns out, people really like that idea!

And, with each selfie, I got a chance to talk to people and let them know about my talk. It was a fun way to chat and - thankfully - seemed to pay off!

Loads of people turned up, they asked brilliant questions at the end, and seemed to really dig my talk.

So, there we go - a fun little experiment which seemed to pay off. I got to meet so many fun new people and made them take some highly questionable photos ?

It was so much fun, that I did it all again when I went to MozFest!

hf2016 – Terence Eden’s Blog

Promoting With 💩