What I've Said

You Got This! Navigating Nightmares

October 2022 | Online event recorded in the United Kingdom

Navigating Redundancy

For most people, “we’re letting you go” are the words you never want to hear. Being made redundant, or laid off, can be shocking and devastating. I have faced redundancy three times in my career. It became easier each time because I learnt something new about the process, and knowledge is power.

In this talk, I outline the things you need to know and do before, during and after your job is taken away from you so you can protect your emotional and financial well-being.

Watch the recording and / or read the transcript.

DevRel Round Table Podcast

September 2022 | Global online event recorded in the United Kingdom

DevRel Tips For Hacktoberfest

DeveloperRelations.com invited me to co-host a round table for their podcast, aimed at helping devrel professionals to get the most out of Hacktoberfest.

Matthew Revell and I discussed the following topics with Phoebe Quincy, Haimantika Mitra, Floor Drees and Courtney Robertson:

• How Hacktoberfest processes have been improved this year to help maintainers and contributors
• Which themes DigitalOcean is focusing on this year
• How to get buy-in from senior people
• Approaches to Hacktoberfest
• Bringing a project into Hacktoberfest for the first time
• How to keep the momentum up through the month of October

Listen to the podcast or watch the recording here:

You Got This! Happy, Healthy Communication

August 2022 | Online event recorded in the United Kingdom

Communicating And Upholding Your Boundaries

“No” is a complete sentence and it’s often a difficult word to say. As a result, we end up with situations, environments, tasks and treatment we don’t want. Setting boundaries helps us to understand and establish our limits. They are essential for our health, but they are useless if we don’t enforce them. And it’s harder to enforce them if we haven’t communicated them.

In this talk, I cover:

• How to let someone know they have crossed the line
• How to tell them it won’t be happening again
• How to decide in advance how you will uphold your boundary if they cross it

Watch the recording and / or read the transcript.

The Code Sandwich Hour Talk Show

June 2022 | Recorded in the UK and USA

Podcast - Interview With Suze Shardlow

Sean C Davis of the Code Sandwich podcast invited me to speak to him about the different stages of my career. We also discussed my favourite sandwich, who I’d like to have lunch with and how you can tell where in the UK someone is from by what they call a bread roll.

Watch the recording here:

DevRelCon Deep Dives

May 2022 | Global online event recorded in the United Kingdom

Developer Marketing In Practice

I was invited to speak at DevRelCon Deep Dives, which was an online event for DevRel leaders featuring speakers with deep expertise in their field.

My session was a round table entitled “Developer Marketing In Practice” where I discussed the following questions with Christie Fidura, Mahmoud Abdelwahab, Matthew Revell and Ramón Huidobro:

• What is the difference between DevRel and developer marketing?
• What do developer marketing people do?
• How can you make developer marketing a part of your developer relations strategy?

Watch the recording here:

DevRel Book Club podcast, Episode 3

March 2022 | Recorded in the UK and Austria

Podcast - The Art Of Gathering With Suze Shardlow

Matthew Revell of DeveloperRelations.com invited me to speak on the DevRel Book Club podcast. He asked me to select a book which has helped me as a devrel practitioner so that we could discuss it.

I chose The Art Of Gathering by Priya Parker.

Listen to the audio recording.

Watch the recording:

codebar Festival: How To Land Your First Developer Job Panel

March 2022 | Global online conference

codebar Festival

codebar Festival is an annual, three-day, online conference which began in 2021. For the second year running, the organisers approached me to MC / moderate an hour-long live panel discussion on How To Land Your First Developer Job.

As MC / moderator, I:

• Researched the four panellists’ career history.
• Prepared appropriate questions, based on my industry knowledge and research, to find out their experiences of getting their first developer job.
• Ensured each panellist had an equal amount of airtime.
• Fielded questions from the live audience and wove them into the discussion.
• Ensured the session started and finished on time.

Watch the recording:

Deepgram Devrel Team

March 2022 | Recorded in the UK and USA

Twitter Space - Every Voice Heard And Understood In Tech

The Deepgram devrel team asked me to be a guest speaker on their Twitter Space about hearing and understanding every voice in tech.

We discussed community, inclusion, privilege and lots more.

Thanks again to our guests @saronyitbarek, @SuzeShardlow, @remotesynth, @domitriusclark, and @chatterboxCoder for sharing your voices with us today.

If you weren't able to make it, you can listen to the replay now: https://t.co/i3aqM6qzWL

— Deepgram Developers (@DeepgramDevs) March 13, 2022

Software Developer's Journey podcast, Episode 186, Season 5

January 2022 | Recorded in the UK and Germany

Podcast - Suze Shardlow - from marketing and the police to simply creating

Tim Bourguignon of the DevJourney podcast invited me to speak to him about the different stages of my career. We talked about why I don’t have imposter syndrome, how my job has been made redundant three times and the skills and experience I brought from my past roles in marketing and management to my current job in developer relations.

Have a listen.

codebar Talks: Demystifying Public Speaking

December 2021 | Global online event recorded in London, United Kingdom

Fighting The Fear Of Public Speaking

codebar approached me to give a talk aimed at early-career developers to encourage them to get into tech public speaking. I agreed, and created a brand new talk because I didn’t have one on the shelf.

In tech, we hear a lot about how getting into public speaking can boost your dev career. But, for most people, the mere thought fills them with terror. They see a call for proposals (CFP) and believe they have nothing to contribute. In this talk, I addressed a number of the common limiting beliefs held by developers at all levels of experience and showed the audience how to take those first steps.

Watch the recording:

Ladies Of Code London: Get Into... Series

November 2021 | Webinar recorded in the United Kingdom

Get into... Devrel And Community

I am a Chapter Lead at Ladies Of Code London. When COVID-19 reached the UK and forced us 100% online, I looked at ways to innovate our offerings. This led to me devising an interview format for our Get Into… series.

Get Into… is where we demystify roles in the tech industry. LoC events cater for those who are already in tech and want to level up and/or switch tracks as well as those who are new to the industry. People are always keen to hear from those who have gone before them.

I chose an interview format to make it more interesting for online viewers and reduce the lead time by removing the labour from the interviewee: all they have to do is turn up on the night. You can read about my methodology in my blog post.

I source the interviewees, write all my own questions and include two speed rounds to vary the pace and keep viewers engaged.

The interviews are conducted on Zoom in front of a live audience who can send their questions in via the chat function. I select some of these questions to weave into the interview.

For Get Into… Devrel And Community, I interviewed Pauline Narvas, who pivoted her career from software engineering to devrel.

Topics we covered included:

• What devrel and community management are, and what they involve
• What motivated Pauline to go into devrel
• Who decides on the content devrels make
• Whether she’s an early bird or a night owl…

We record the interviews and post them on YouTube after the event. The video for this event is coming soon.

DevRelCon 2021

November 2021 | Global online event recorded in London, United Kingdom

Marketing Is Your Job, Too

I was selected to speak at DevRelCon 2021! I gave a 20-minute talk which covered the main tenets of marketing and how we can use them to be more effective developer relations practitioners.

I was also invited to speak on a panel about how to go further with your developer marketing, with Tamao Nakahara, Zachary Powell and Cory Althoff.

My talk covered:

• What marketing is
• What marketing is not (it isn’t just about advertising and publicity)
• The AIDA (attention/awareness, interest, desire, action) marketing model
• The 7 Ps of marketing (product, price, place, promotion, people, process, physical evidence)
• Practical, actionable ways in which devrel professionals can combine AIDA with the marketing 7 Ps to engage with developers in a meaningful way without selling or marketing to them

Watch the recording here:

Women In Tech Nottingham

November 2021 | Online event recorded in London, United Kingdom

The Power of Persuasion: Negotiation For Techies

Getting what you want can be hard, and it often feels like the other person won’t budge. But negotiation is a two-way process that you can influence and, as with most things in life, preparation is key. In this talk, I demonstrated some tried and tested techniques that you can start applying straightaway to achieve your desired results.

Watch the recording:

Virtual Coffee podcast, Season 4, Episode 5

November 2021 | Recorded in the UK and USA

Podcast - Suze Shardlow - Creating welcoming spaces in dev communities

The Virtual Coffee team invited me to speak on their podcast about my career and how I got to where I am now. We talked about my lifelong interest in coding and the jobs I’ve had. We also discussed the book I have published this year and my new job, where I have been doing a lot of live streaming.

Have a listen.

Hacktoberfest

October 2021 | Webinar recorded in the UK and USA

Technical Writing Explained: Fireside 1:1 with Suze Shardlow and Lance Leonard

I was the Developer Community Manager at Redis. In 2021, I organised the company’s first-ever Hacktoberfest project.

As part of this, I held a series of fireside chats with members of the documentation team to demystify technical writing. I decided to do this because documentation is often cited as a great way to get started with open source, but many people don’t know what it involves, so they don’t try it.

I organised the firesides, structured the conversations, wrote the questions and acted as host, interviewer and MC for the events.

Lance is one of the technical writers and manages the documentation team. In this fireside chat we discussed his career path so far.

Watch the recording:

Hacktoberfest

October 2021 | Webinar recorded in the UK and USA

Technical Writing Explained: Fireside 1:1 with Suze Shardlow and Rachel Elledge

I was the Developer Community Manager at Redis. In 2021, I organised the company’s first-ever Hacktoberfest project.

As part of this, I held a series of fireside chats with members of the documentation team to demystify technical writing. I decided to do this because documentation is often cited as a great way to get started with open source, but many people don’t know what it involves, so they don’t try it.

I organised the firesides, structured the conversations, wrote the questions and acted as host, interviewer and MC for the events.

Rachel is one of the technical writers. In this fireside chat we discussed how she got into technical writing from a software engineering background.

Watch the recording:

Hacktoberfest

October 2021 | Webinar recorded in the UK and USA

Technical Writing Explained: Fireside 1:1 with Suze Shardlow and Kaitlyn Michael

I was the Developer Community Manager at Redis. In 2021, I organised the company’s first-ever Hacktoberfest project.

As part of this, I held a series of fireside chats with members of the documentation team to demystify technical writing. I decided to do this because documentation is often cited as a great way to get started with open source, but many people don’t know what it involves, so they don’t try it.

I organised the firesides, structured the conversations, wrote the questions and acted as host, interviewer and MC for the events.

Kaitlyn is one of the technical writers. In this fireside chat we discussed how she got into technical writing from a non-technical academic background.

Watch the recording:

Hacktoberfest

October 2021 | Webinar recorded in the UK and USA

Technical Writing Explained: Fireside Panel with Suze Shardlow and the Redis Documentation Team

I was the Developer Community Manager at Redis. In 2021, I organised the company’s first-ever Hacktoberfest project.

As part of this, I held a series of fireside chats with members of the documentation team to demystify technical writing. I decided to do this because documentation is often cited as a great way to get started with open source, but many people don’t know what it involves, so they don’t try it.

I organised the firesides, structured the conversations, wrote the questions and acted as host, interviewer and MC for the events.

Kaitlyn, Rachel and Lance are technical writers in the documentation team. In this fireside chat we discussed how they got into technical writing from technical and non-technical backgrounds.

Watch the recording:

Hacktoberfest

October 2021 | Live stream recorded in the UK

Hacktoberfest at Redis with Suze Shardlow and Simon Prickett from the Devrel Team

I was the Developer Community Manager at Redis. In 2021, I organised the company’s first-ever Hacktoberfest project.

As part of this, I held a number of live streams with members of the devrel team. One of them was a Hacktoberfest roundup/progress report which I presented with Simon Prickett, the Principal Developer Advocate. We explained what Hacktoberfest was, how to get involved and then looked at some of the issues we had made available to the open source community and the pull requests we had received from contributors.

We streamed this live on Twitch and the recording lives on YouTube. Watch it below:

Event Handler Monthly Fireside Chat

August 2021 | Member-only online event recorded in London, United Kingdom

Fireside Chat: Calls For Proposals

I am a resident expert at Event Handler, a Discord community for developer event organisers.

Kevin Lewis, the founder, asked me to join him for a fireside chat about Calls For Proposals.

We covered:

• What CFPs are
• When to run a CFP
• How to run a CFP and how to choose talks
• CFP platforms
• Understanding speaker motivations
• How to communicated the results

Community Camp by Orbit

June 2021 | Global online event recorded in London, United Kingdom

What Will Developer Events Look Like In 2021 and Beyond?

Orbit asked me to speak at a panel as part of their Community Camp festival.

At the time, I had delivered more than 100 online tech events (for a total of over 250 hours) during COVID, so I was invited to speak about the future of developer events as the pandemic progresses.

Watch the recording here:

GitHub Education

June 2021 | Global online event recorded in London, United Kingdom

What In The Tech Do I Do?

I was approached to take part in this GitHub Education Twitch show. For each episode, they have a tech professional (on this occasion, me) and a student who is taking a non-computer science degree.

We started off with two games of Hangman: one to reveal my profession and the other to reveal the student’s degree title.

Then we had a chat about what our job/degree involves and our career journey so far.

Finally, we played a game where we had to give one-word clues so the others could guess our secret passwords.

It was a lot of fun and the audience was ace! My first time on Twitch.

Watch the episode here:

PyCon Colombia

June 2021 | Global conference recorded in London, United Kingdom

Voices from the Past: Love, Life and Relationships from the 1980s with Flask

I spoke at the fifth annual PyCon Colombia event about the work I am doing with the University of Sussex to bring their 30-year-old research interviews to life.

Here is the abstract:

Academic research takes many forms. In the 1980s, we faced a different pandemic: the AIDS crisis. Some 30 years ago, a group of researchers interviewed young women in London and Manchester, UK, about aspects of their lives and how they felt about love and relationships. The voices of these women exist on audio cassette tapes and transcripts recorded at the time and, now, these voices from the past meet us in the present via a chatbot powered by Flask.

This project shows how the more things change, the more they stay the same as we “chat” with the original subjects about their backgrounds, cultures and intimate relationships.

This talk is for Data Scientists interested in working with unstructured text data, Python developers wishing to understand basic Flask web application development and anyone curious about the social implications of chatbot design.

Attendees should have some experience developing applications in Python and a basic understanding of how a web application makes calls to a backend API.

Having attended this talk, the audience should be able to:

• Describe the architecture of a chatbot web application
• Set up a basic Flask application
• Be empowered to further research new ways of bringing existing data sets to life

Watch the talk here:

TECH(K)NOW Day

March 2021 | Global conference recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get It Done: The Power Of Co-working

TECH(K)NOW Day is a twice-yearly women in tech conference, held around International Women’s Day (March) and Ada Lovelace Day (October).

When the UK first went into COVID lockdown in March 2020, I took all my community events online. One of the events we introduced was a weekly co-working session called Get On With It. I have written about my Get On With It methodology in my blog.

This talk discusses:

• How to allocate time to projects you need to get done
• The benefits of co-working
• How to use co-working as a productivity tool
• How to set up and run your own co-working sessions using my framework which has since been adopted in the USA

Watch the talk.

codebar Festival: How To Land Your First Developer Job Panel

March 2021 | Global online conference

codebar Festival

codebar Festival was a three-day online conference. The organisers approached me to moderate an hour-long live panel discussion on How To Land Your First Developer Job.

As moderator, I:

• Researched the five panellists’ career history.
• Prepared appropriate questions, based on my industry knowledge and research, to find out their experiences of getting their first developer job.
• Ensured each panellist had an equal amount of airtime.
• Fielded questions from the live audience and wove them into the discussion.
• Ensured the session started and finished on time.

You can watch the panel discussion below:

Global Diversity CFP Day 2021: Europe Live Stream

February 2021 | Global conference recorded in London, United Kingdom

Global Diversity CFP Day 2021

The Global Diversity CFP Day (GDCFP Day) team approached me to ask if I would be Europe Lead for their first online event.

GDCFP Day takes place at the beginning of every year. It usually takes the form of in-person workshops in 80+ cities worldwide (see my blog post), however, for COVID reasons that was not possible this year.

Instead, GDCFP Day consisted of six live streams from different continents across the world, which all took place from 9am local time on Saturday 20th February.

The European stream was six hours long.

As Europe Lead, I:

• Curated content suitable for aspiring tech conference speakers.
• Sourced fellow Europe-based experienced conference speakers to deliver the content.
• Designed the schedule for the six-hour event.
• MCd the entire event, ensuring it kept to the schedule.
• Facilitated one 1:1 fireside chat and two fireside panel discussions.

The video will be available soon.

You Got This From Your Couch

January 2021 | Global conference recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get It Done: The Power Of Co-working

You Got This is a conference focusing on core skills needed for a happy, healthy work life.

When the UK first went into COVID lockdown in March 2020, I took all my community events online. One of the events we introduced was a weekly co-working session called Get On With It. I have written about my Get On With It methodology in my blog.

This talk discusses:

• How to allocate time to projects you need to get done
• The benefits of co-working
• How to use co-working as a productivity tool
• How to set up and run your own co-working sessions using my framework which has since been adopted in the USA

Watch the talk.

Aspiring Women Speakers Q&A With Suze Shardlow

December 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Aspiring Women Speakers

The Aspiring Women Speakers group asked me to take part in a Q&A to help people who want to get into public speaking.

In this round table, I talk about:

• What 2020 was like for me
• How I got into public speaking
• The public speaking workshops I ran for Ladies of Code London
• What to leave your audience with

You can watch the interview below:

Ladies Of Code London: Get Heard Public Speaking Workshop Series

August 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get Heard: Summer Short Talks

I am a Chapter Lead at Ladies Of Code London. When COVID-19 reached the UK and forced us 100% online, we had to look at our plans and decide whether to mothball them or convert them to something we could deliver over Zoom.

Get Heard was a four-week public speaking workshop series we ran in July 2020. It culminated in a short talks showcase evening for the four “graduates”. You can read about our methodology in my blog post.

I MCd the event, using my own script.

You can watch the Get Heard short talks showcase event below:

Ladies Of Code London: Get Into... Series

August 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get into... Data Science

I am a Chapter Lead at Ladies Of Code London. When COVID-19 reached the UK and forced us 100% online, I looked at ways to innovate our offerings. This led to me devising an interview format for our Get Into… series.

Get Into… is where we demystify roles in the tech industry. LoC events cater for those who are already in tech and want to level up and/or switch tracks as well as those who are new to the industry. People are always keen to hear from those who have gone before them.

I chose an interview format to make it more interesting for online viewers and reduce the lead time by removing the labour from the interviewee: all they have to do is turn up on the night. You can read about my methodology in my blog post.

I source the interviewees, write all my own questions and include two speed rounds to vary the pace and keep viewers engaged.

The interviews are conducted on Zoom in front of a live audience who can send their questions in via the chat function. I select some of these questions to weave into the interview.

For Get Into… Data Science, I interviewed Dr Eva M, who pivoted her career from ecology to data science.

Topics we covered included:

• The basic qualifications you need to become a data scientist
• Which data science skills are most in demand at the moment
• Which tools and languages she uses
• Whether she accepts or rejects cookies…

We record the interviews and post them on YouTube after the event. You can watch Get Into… Data Science below:

Instagram Live with codebar

June 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Instagram Live with codebar

Our friends at codebar asked me to join them for an Instagram Live to talk about what Ladies of Code London does.

Topics we covered included:

• What we do at Ladies of Code
• Ladies of Code going 100% online

You can watch the recording below:

Ladies Of Code London: Get Into... Series

June 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get into... Data Engineering

I am a Chapter Lead at Ladies Of Code London. When COVID-19 reached the UK and forced us 100% online, I looked at ways to innovate our offerings. This led to me devising an interview format for our Get Into… series.

Get Into… is where we demystify roles in the tech industry. LoC events cater for those who are already in tech and want to level up and/or switch tracks as well as those who are new to the industry. People are always keen to hear from those who have gone before them.

I chose an interview format to make it more interesting for online viewers and reduce the lead time by removing the labour from the interviewee: all they have to do is turn up on the night. You can read about my methodology in my blog post.

I source the interviewees, write all my own questions and include two speed rounds to vary the pace and keep viewers engaged.

The interviews are conducted on Zoom in front of a live audience who can send their questions in via the chat function. I select some of these questions to weave into the interview.

For Get Into… Data Engineering, I interviewed Sarah Usher and Valentina Romeo.

Topics we covered included:

• The relationship between data engineering and other teams in the business
• How data engineering differs from data analysis, machine learning engineering and data science
• What sort of portfolio a budding data engineer should have
• What their favourite takeaways are…

We record the interviews and post them on YouTube after the event. You can watch Get Into… Data Engineering below:

Ladies Of Code London: Get Into... Series

June 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get into... Product Management

I am a Chapter Lead at Ladies Of Code London. When COVID-19 reached the UK and forced us 100% online, I looked at ways to innovate our offerings. This led to me devising an interview format for our Get Into… series.

Get Into… is where we demystify roles in the tech industry. LoC events cater for those who are already in tech and want to level up and/or switch tracks as well as those who are new to the industry. People are always keen to hear from those who have gone before them.

I chose an interview format to make it more interesting for online viewers and reduce the lead time by removing the labour from the interviewee: all they have to do is turn up on the night. You can read about my methodology in my blog post.

I source the interviewees, write all my own questions and include two speed rounds to vary the pace and keep viewers engaged.

The interviews are conducted on Zoom in front of a live audience who can send their questions in via the chat function. I select some of these questions to weave into the interview.

For Get Into… Product Management, I approached Head of Consumer Product at Gousto, Melanie McKay, because she has worked in Product Management at a variety of organisations in the public and private sectors over the past 15 years. She now leads product management at the UK’s largest real estate and property website.

Topics we covered included:

• How to get into technical product management from outside the tech industry
• The tools that product managers use
• Common misconceptions about product management
• What Melanie’s second-favourite website is…

We record the interviews and post them on YouTube after the event. You can watch Get Into… Product Management below:

Ladies Of Code London: Get Into... Series

May 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get into... Engineering Management

I am a Chapter Lead at Ladies Of Code London. When COVID-19 reached the UK and forced us 100% online, I looked at ways to innovate our offerings. This led to me devising an interview format for our Get Into… series.

Get Into… is where we demystify roles in the tech industry. LoC events cater for those who are already in tech and want to level up and/or switch tracks as well as those who are new to the industry. People are always keen to hear from those who have gone before them.

I chose an interview format to make it more interesting for online viewers and reduce the lead time by removing the labour from the interviewee: all they have to do is turn up on the night. You can read about my methodology in my blog post.

I source the interviewees, write all my own questions and include two speed rounds to vary the pace and keep viewers engaged.

The interviews are conducted on Zoom in front of a live audience who can send their questions in via the chat function. I select some of these questions to weave into the interview.

For Get Into… Engineering Management, I approached Software Engineering Manager at Gousto, Amy Phillips, because she has held a number of tech management roles across various organisations and was well-placed to give us some views about what it takes to be an engineering manager.

Topics we covered included:

• Different flavours of engineering management
• Who your main working relationships are with as an engineering manager
• Where you can go from engineering management if you want to progress further
• Whether or not Marmite should be allowed in the house…

We record the interviews and post them on YouTube after the event. You can watch Get Into… Engineering Management below:

Ladies Of Code London: Get Into... Series

April 2020 | Webinar recorded in London, United Kingdom

Get into... Web Development

I am a Chapter Lead at Ladies Of Code London. When COVID-19 reached the UK and forced us 100% online, I looked at ways to innovate our offerings. This led to me devising an interview format for our Get Into… series.

Get Into… is where we demystify roles in the tech industry. LoC events cater for those who are already in tech and want to level up and/or switch tracks as well as those who are new to the industry. People are always keen to hear from those who have gone before them.

I chose an interview format to make it more interesting for online viewers and reduce the lead time by removing the labour from the interviewee: all they have to do is turn up on the night. You can read about my methodology in my blog post.

I source the interviewees, write all my own questions and include two speed rounds to vary the pace and keep viewers engaged.

The interviews are conducted on Zoom in front of a live audience who can send their questions in via the chat function. I select some of these questions to weave into the interview.

For Get Into… Web Development, I approached Niamh because she had an unusual story: she taught herself. I wanted to highlight this as a viable route to paid coding work which may be an option for those who can’t access bootcamps or similar courses.

Topics we covered included:

• How Niamh taught herself to code alongside a full-time job
• Moving from learning to code to getting paid to code
• Workplace mentoring and support
• Which were better: Boyzone or Westlife…

We record the interviews and post them on YouTube after the event. You can watch Get Into… Web Development below:

FACT///.Coding Workshop Series With Suze Shardlow

March 2020 | University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

FACT///.Coding Workshop Series With Suze Shardlow

Following the talk I gave at their Symposium in November 2019, the lecturers at the University of Sussex invited me to create and deliver a series of three half-day coding workshops for them.

The workshop participants are Professors, PhDs and PhD candidates who have no coding experience, or are very rusty.

The brief was to:

• Teach the basics of JavaScript and Python
• Guide participants through using those languages in a practical way to create something interactive and relevant to the participants’ work

After bouncing some ideas off the client, I suggested we build a chatbot as the end product of the workshop series. The client has some data gathered during a project 30+ years ago which we are making accessible via the chatbot.

All the workshops are hands-on.

Workshop One (in early February 2020) focuses on the basics of JavaScript and Python.

Workshop Two (in late February 2020) focuses on building the bot in stages, gradually introducing intelligence.

Workshop Three (this one) concludes the build of the chatbot, increases the AI and brings in the original data from 1988 so we can chat with the subjects of the study.

Professor Rachel Thomson of the University of Sussex, who conducted the original research, has written a blog post about Workshop One.

FACT///.Coding Workshop Series With Suze Shardlow

February 2020 | University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

FACT///.Coding Workshop Series With Suze Shardlow

Following the talk I gave at their Symposium in November 2019, the lecturers at the University of Sussex invited me to create and deliver a series of three half-day coding workshops for them.

The workshop participants are Professors, PhDs and PhD candidates who have no coding experience, or are very rusty.

The brief was to:

• Teach the basics of JavaScript and Python
• Guide participants through using those languages in a practical way to create something interactive and relevant to the participants’ work

After bouncing some ideas off the client, I suggested we build a chatbot as the end product of the workshop series. The client has some data gathered during a project 30+ years ago which we are making accessible via the chatbot.

All the workshops are hands-on.

Workshop One (in early February 2020) focuses on the basics of JavaScript and Python.

Workshop Two (this one) focuses on building the bot in stages, gradually introducing intelligence

Workshop Three (in March 2020) concludes the build of the chatbot, increases the AI and brings in the original data from 1988 so we can chat with the subjects of the study.

Professor Rachel Thomson of the University of Sussex, who conducted the original research, has written a blog post about Workshop One.

codebar monthlies

February 2020 | FutureGov, London, United Kingdom

Tech Conferences For The Uninitiated

codebar monthlies are for developers with 0-6 months’ coding experience.

After my talk on Hackathons For The Uninitiated in October 2019, codebar asked me to return in Q1 2020 to deliver a talk based on my blog post on Tech Conferences For The Uninitiated.

In April 2019 I attended my first tech conference as a software engineer and, by the end of the year, had attended more than 15 conferences and spoken at two of them.

In this talk, I advise on:

• Deciding why to attend
• Finding your tribe
• Finding your level
• Getting your ticket
• Connecting with people beforehand
• Figuring out your schedule
• Deciding what to bring
• Finding your space
• Managing your expectations
• Networking: approaching people you don’t know
• Networking: keeping in touch

FACT///.Coding Workshop Series With Suze Shardlow

February 2020 | University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

FACT///.Coding Workshop Series With Suze Shardlow

Following the talk I gave at their Symposium in November 2019, the lecturers at the University of Sussex invited me to create and deliver a series of three half-day coding workshops for them.

The workshop participants are Professors, PhDs and PhD candidates who have no coding experience, or are very rusty.

The brief was to:

• Teach the basics of JavaScript and Python
• Guide participants through using those languages in a practical way to create something interactive and relevant to the participants’ work

After bouncing some ideas off the client, I suggested we build a chatbot as the end product of the workshop series. The client has some data gathered during a project 30+ years ago which we are making accessible via the chatbot.

All the workshops are hands-on.

Workshop One (this one) focuses on the basics of JavaScript and Python.

Workshop Two (in late February 2020) focuses on building the bot in stages, gradually introducing intelligence.

Workshop Three (in March 2020) concludes the build of the chatbot, increases the AI and brings in the original data from 1988 so we can chat with the subjects of the study.

Professor Rachel Thomson of the University of Sussex, who conducted the original research, has written a blog post about Workshop One.

Fundamental JS

January 2020 | American Addiction Centers, San Diego, California, USA

Hackathons For The Uninitiated

Fundamental JS is part of the San Diego JS family of meetups. It is a monthly event which focuses on “vanilla” JavaScript: no frameworks or libraries allowed! Each month they have one code talk and one people skills talk.

This is a repeat of the talk I gave at codebar monthlies in October 2019, with updated slides and the content customised for an American audience.

Hackathons are for everyone in tech. They a great way to meet others in the industry and hone your collaboration skills.

In this talk, I describe:

• What a hackathon is
• Different hackathon formats
• What it’s like to take part
• How to find others to work with
• What non-coding skills you can bring
• How I entered and won my first hackathon
• How you can find hackathons to enter

Interestingly, the straw poll I took at this talk gave similar results to the one in London. It showed that a fifth of the audience knew what a hackathon was and didn’t think it was for them, however, by the end of my talk they were all keen to try one.

Women Who Code San Diego

January 2020 | Hera Hub, San Diego, California, USA

Build Your Personal Website And Blog with GitHub Pages and Jekyll

I am a Director of Women Who Code (WWCode) London and, as soon as I knew I would be holidaying in San Diego, I reached out to my WWCode counterparts there to offer to run a workshop for them.

January is a popular time to try new things and make changes in one’s life and career, so I decided to create a workshop to teach people how to create their own personal branding and portfolio website using GitHub Pages and Jekyll.

This hands-on workshop is aimed at experienced coders (of any language) who are familiar with common programming concepts like variables, objects, loops and IF statements. It is not suitable for code newbies.

I equip participants with prepared website templates and the skills to add layouts and content to their site using DRY principles. They can add as many blog posts and projects as they like, which will be neatly rendered in a grid on a flexible template.

I also created a student handbook which they are free to use and refer to in their own time. Some students have shared this with friends and colleagues.

As you can see from the photo, I had a full house of 40 students for this workshop. Three of the participants reached out to me within 48 hours of the session to let me know they had published blog posts on their new sites.

Testimonials:

“Suze led the “Building Your Portfolio with Jekyll” workshop offered through Women Who Code in San Diego, California. I was really excited for the opportunity to listen and learn anything code related from someone from another country, and Suze is from the UK. The entire process was really rewarding. The event was communicated well in advance, and after I signed up, Suze reached out same day via email to add me to the group’s Slack channel. She sent us prerequisites for what we should already know and notes ahead of her presentation. The actual presentation was well organized, quick paced (under 2 hours), with pauses to explain syntax using Jekyll, and included recommendations on how to utilize Jekyll to promote dry code. As a growing developer, I was excited to take part in a workshop where we built a new project from start to finish and had the site live and up and running by the end. I definitely hope to see Suze for another workshop! Thank you!” -Workshop Participant

“Suze Shardlow is an amazing instructor. Her passion for technology and experience as a Full Stack Engineer is invaluable in her role as Director of Women Who Code London. Suze created and led an awesome workshop on how to Build Your Personal Website And Blog With GitHub Pages and Jekyll. I was fortunate to attend her workshop during her travels to the US, at a recent local WWCode chapter meetup. She skillfully curated the content and supplemental materials in such a way that allowed for maximum comprehension and successful results within a limited hour long time frame. The technical skills I obtained from the workshop facilitated by Suze were easily applied to a subsequent project, and the materials provided have been a great resource in the planning of my own personal professional blog.” -Workshop Participant

“Suze hosted a really practical and well structured workshop for Women Who Code San Diego focused on teaching how to create a personal dev blog from GitHub. Even if attendees had different background and experience, they were all able to easily follow the workshop and have a live blog at the end of the event. Suze is an exceptional teacher, engaged on helping everyone succeed before, during, and after the workshop. I hope she can host the workshop for us again given the large interest received.” -Event Organiser

FACT///.Mapping Feminists Coding Practices Symposium

November 2019 | University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

Working Towards More Inclusive Tech Communities

I was invited by the University of Sussex to speak on the subject of inclusion in tech communities at their coding conference.

The audience was Professors, PhDs and PhD candidates from the University of Sussex and other institutions in the CHASE Network.

In this long talk, I cover:

• Communities in tech and why we need them
• Privilege: does inclusion mean exclusion?
• “Safe” and “brave” spaces
• Language: why things like “hi guys!” aren’t unisex

When you enter the tech industry, you soon realise that meetups are a Thing. Groups gather every night of the week in every major city in the world and share IT ideas and knowledge over pizza and beers.

Statistics, by their very nature, vary - but, by any measure, tech is dominated by white men and has been for decades. There are, however, thousands of women, people of colour and other minorities in the industry. And there are countless community groups catering to their needs.

But by being inclusive, are these groups actually exclusive? Have you ever seen an event advertised and thought it looked great but then realised that you’re not the target market for the group? How did this make you feel? Happy that the marginalised community in question had a safe space, or slighted and wondering how they’d like it if you had a club just for people like you?

Would you agree that, mostly, people just want to be themselves? Have you ever experienced a time where you felt you couldn’t?

You can listen to the audio recording of this talk below. The recording starts with an introduction by Professor Kate O’Riordan, Head of School for Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex and my talk begins at four minutes in.

codebar monthlies

October 2019 | Ticketmaster HQ, London, United Kingdom

Hackathons For The Uninitiated

codebar monthlies are for developers with 0-6 months’ coding experience.

Hackathons are for everyone in tech. They a great way to meet others in the industry and hone your collaboration skills.

In this talk, I describe:

• What a hackathon is
• Different hackathon formats
• What it’s like to take part
• How to find others to work with
• What non-coding skills you can bring
• How I entered and won my first hackathon
• How you can find hackathons to enter

A straw poll at this talk showed that a fifth of the audience knew what a hackathon was and didn’t think it was for them, however, by the end of my talk they were all keen to try one.

Women Who Code Front End Summit

October 2019 | BCG Digital Ventures, Berlin, Germany

From Policing To Programming: How I Changed Career When I Turned 40

This is a long version of my first tech talk, the original lightning version of which has had over 7200 views on YouTube. You can watch the lightning version below.

People had come to this conference from all over the world, so I adapted the content and terminology for an international audience. I also went into more detail in the section on the bootcamp experience.

I first started coding when I was seven years old. I became a software engineer as an adult following long careers in marketing and policing and surviving three redundancies.

Here I talk about:

• How I decided I wanted to be a coder
• How I made the leap
• What I learned along the way

Greater Than 11% Podcast, Episode 41

June 2019 | Hub TV, London, United Kingdom

Podcast - Suze Shardlow - Coder

I did my first tech talk as a software engineer back in April 2019, about how I switched careers. Renée Vaughan Sutherland, Chief Creative Officer at a TV company, saw the video and contacted me to ask if I would guest on her podcast!

She was interviewing women in creative roles and counted coding as one of them. I accepted the invitation straightaway and, a few weeks later, went to record the podcast with her.

We talk coding, crafting and creativity: what I love about them and how they’re all linked.

Have a listen here.

COED:CODE Lightning Talks Event: New Speaker Talent Showcase

April 2019 | Pivotal Europe, London, United Kingdom

From Policing To Programming: How I Changed Career When I Turned 40

This was my first tech talk, which has had over 7200 views on YouTube. You can watch it below.

I first started coding when I was seven years old. I became a software engineer as an adult following long careers in marketing and policing and surviving three redundancies.

Here I talk about:

• How I decided I wanted to be a coder
• How I made the leap
• What I learned along the way

Women Driven Development Hackathon

March 2019 | Expedia UK, London, United Kingdom

Hackathon Vlog Interview

I’ve attended a few hackathons in the past five years; I won the first one.

In this interview I talk about my journey from coding as a child to becoming a software engineer as an adult. I also talk about why anyone can succeed at a hackathon.

This vlog interview turned out to be a precursor to my talk “Hackathons For The Uninitiated”, which I have given in London, UK and California, USA.

You can watch the interview below.