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There was a recent episode of the Bikeshed podcast where the hosts had Sandi Metz on as a guest for their RubyConf panel. At one point they took an audience que
by JasonSage 10y ago
There was a recent episode of the Bikeshed podcast where the hosts had Sandi Metz on as a guest for their RubyConf panel. At one point they took an audience question along the lines of "What should I do a talk on? I'm sure everybody already knows whatever I'm going to talk about."
Sandi Metz had a great answer. Something like "What have you learned in the last year? Do your talk on that. No matter where you are now, there's somebody out there now who is where you were a year ago. They still have those things to learn."
I think this is a really healthy way of looking at blog posts as well. You may say what you want to write about is too complicated for beginners but been done before by experts, but that also means there are plenty of people out there that just don't know it yet, even though they are ready. It doesn't matter if you've been in your technical field 2 years or 10, there are other people out there just behind you waiting to learn the same things you have.
If you wrote about everything that came to mind in this manner I am sure you'd have some writing that goes over some basic stuff, but also writing that is extremely relevant to some readers and will help them immensely.
- vog 10y agoI've had a similar experience. I occasionally give talks, and often my best talks were about topics where I didn't have to prepare much, because I'm deeply familar their topic. It's a win-win situation. Preparation mostly reduces to deciding on the order of topics. Maybe researching some details I don't feel confident about. Maybe drawing some diagrams and/or looking for nice pictures. That's it. The only "trick" is to have an audience to which my topic is all news.