Clojurians Log v2

Not quite a hammock but 🤷🏻‍♂️

I mean; it is also suspended

What makes a hammock a hammock?

let's go to the dictionary 😅

One recommendation is the YouTube video How to speak. It's not about anxiety but just how to give a good presentation

On anxiety: just make a lot of miles

I believe you're referring to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

A meetup like yesterday was very informal. One way to make it more enjoyable for yourself could be to make it more interactive and or get more into the tech and hack together, you don't have to make it a formal presentation

Although some structure to guide the conversation is certainly very helpful

I spoke at user groups and conferences around the world for nearly two decades and I was always anxious before and drained afterward. You can become a great presenter through practice and through reading/watching hints and tips on how to engage your audience and structure a talk, but you may never lose the anxiety and exhaustion of it. And that's okay: even the best, most seasoned conference speakers are often anxious before and exhausted after!

Feeling exhausted is not uncommon I think, as you put a lot of effort into it. As for feeling anxious, the best advice I ever got was: there are three presentations: • The one you prepare • The one you actual give • And the one you wish you had given Considering that this is very true, you always think if things you could have done better, forgot to say etc. I came to the conclusion that the bit in the middle isn't that important. You do your best and that is all that counts IMHO.

For me it depends. I'm more anxious to present before an audience who doesn't know me that well and I kinda have to "sell" the topic to them, like presenting about Clojure at a general dev conference, I totally don't like that and it drains me if I get blank stares ;)

so I'm glad I'm not the clojure dev advocate :)

I used to give Clojure talks at ColdFusion user groups and conferences 😄

I mean a did a couple of those talks, I also had fun ones, it also depends on the audience and setting

I remember doing one about reagent + CLJS at a general dev meetup. I thought I came across way too boring and it didn't do much. But years later I discovered that at least one person actually picked it up and started doing clojure because of that talk (I don't remember who that was but he did tell me)

I also did a couple of clojure talks at universities and taught a clojure course there. Also "converted" some people along the way

When I was at Macromedia/Adobe, they'd send me to conferences all over the world to speak about ColdFusion-related topics -- and I was not a dev advocate! (I was Macromedia's senior IT architect) I left Adobe in 2007, but continued to talk about CFML for years, gradually adding bits of FP and Clojure into my talks after 2010, including user groups in Sydney and Melbourne while my wife and I were on vacation there 🙂 and some of those CFers became Clojurians.

but after doing 16 years of Clojure I find it harder and harder to "sell" clojure since it's so normal to me

tl;dr it's way easier to speak about something while you're also exploring it yourself and feeling the excitement

the audience makes a big difference, last week I did the Rama presentation online only. that sucked. A live audience is so much better.

oh yes, online presentations... same feeling

The shift to online presentations was a big part of why I stopped giving talks. I like a live audience.

(aside from one or two REPL-based demos, I haven't given a talk anywhere since 2013 now...)

anyway, if you guys want to know what the presentation was about yesterday that @pdekruif gave: People now take Java + React (or Clojure + ClojureScript and Reagent / Re-frame) for granted as a default stack. But things have shifted. Browsers have become faster, CSS has matured (transitions) and it's actually feasible to build interactive web apps with updating components while you type without JS, using (full page) morph (HTMX, D*). So there's an opportunity to rethink what we take for granted. This was also exemplified by two talks at the Clojure Conj last year, and other talks/demos like those by Anders Murphy. I haven't had the chance to work on one of those "new-old" stacks yet since I don't do a lot of "backend web dev" these days, but I'm curious about it of course.

I recently build a SSR website. bits of JS here and there, but not much

What was funny is that the talk was announced to be about "SSR". I expected SSR to be taken as: you have a SPA but you want to use SSR to improve the initial UX + search index results. That's how the term SSR was used in the React context. But I guess SSR now means PHP-style apps?

maybe... I just generate hiccup with small bits of JS.

in what context, job or hobby thingie?

commercial side project.

I used to do that when I started out with clojure btw. but it was just tic-tac-toe... and I was happy to get rid of my backend so I didn't have to run that on my VPS anymore :P

The morph libraries are still JS tho', right? You just don't have to write JS yourself?

yes, they are relatively small JS projects

At IBM we wrote a tic-tac-toe in cljc, with two end points. one running it in the browser and one on the backend. same logic, two different ways to present the data

https://bootkiezen.nl/ (still quite a few bugs, and on Safari pictures that are upside down)

seems to be a '.webp problem

my first ever clojure project that I also hosted on my VPS was a service to find out who was following you on twitter, but not vice versa I took it offline when twitter closed their free API

that was classic SSR, CLJS didn't even exist then

I feel you, presentations suck all my energy too. Not giving a f*uck is what I was recommended, but easier said than done.

When I do stuff online (and I do a lot of presenting in the day job) I basically turn the presentation into a series of provocations (and or a workshop)

'cos yeah, I can't go for that long w/o feedback

if I wanted no feedback I'd do a blog post

For me, it helps to be clear on what I think about the subject, why I think that way, and the path I'm taking through the material. I'm always nervous before speaking, but once I get talking, that goes away.

Also, congrats on the meetup! I appreciate you taking on the responsibility and making it happen. It's no small effort.

all of my jokes about this are too obvious. I'm paralysed by the choice

Great job

Hehe, thanks! They don't respond to simple instructions, unlike children and animals, but I got there in the end.

Sounds lovely! Nice French too.

maybe ask in #C054B77K5 as well