Turning blog posts into talks 🚀

A year ago, I have learned something about me that I always knew deep down inside. I have learned that I'm a great storyteller.

Everyone likes listening to great storytellers, because we all like great stories.

What other way for me to tell great stories but by giving talks?

Blogging as a gateway

This summer, I have launched my blog. Now, that I'm starting to get the gist of blogging, I really value using this medium to tell a story. Writing is a fantastic way to put your mind in order. A fantastic way to reflect on something you have learned. A fantastic way to let others partake in your thoughts.

After I wrote a couple of blog posts, I was invited as a speaker at Liechtenecker's UX Snacks, a local event in Vienna.

From the moment I accepted the invite, it was clear what I wanted to do. I wanted to recycle one of my blog posts and turn it into a talk. Instead of coming up with a new idea, why not talk about a problem I have already spent time thinking about?

Picking a blog posts to turn into a talk

Since the event's name had the letters "U" and "X" in it (UX), I limited the potential candidates.

This was my shortlist:

• 📄 Web Forms for Everyone
• 🚪 The Accessible Door
• 👹 Do Hackers care about Accessibility?
• 🏷 Labelling The Web

In order to make this decision, I had to keep two things in mind:

1. Crowd: is the blog post's content suitable for the crowd at the event – in this case, mostly designers?
2. Story: does the blog post already feature a story line, that I can reuse to deliver the message?

The pick

For a long time, I wanted to make a talk out of Web Forms for Everyone. However, I found that most of the examples I had used were more directed to a developer crowd. I could have gone the extra mile to extract the UX bits of this post, but I suppose I wasn't sure on how to do it properly, just yet.

I could have picked The Accessible Door, since the story was already there. In it, I used doors as a metaphor for design. People get excluded from using them if their circumstances aren't considered in the design process. The topic itself was also suitable for my audience. However, the post addresses a general design problem of today's world, when I wanted a story closer to the digital user experience.

Do Hackers care about Accessibility? obviously has a nice story line to it. Not only does it talk about a 16-year-old me whose heart got crushed once he realized his website had been hacked. Also, a 33-year-old me could have shown the audience how to fix a crappy website, designed by a soulless hacker. But this one felt too technical.

In the end, I picked Labelling The Web. While it has one or two code snippets in it, I felt that the topic needed to be heard by a lot of people. On top of that, I have a charming story line going there as well. The story of my grandma creating a website about her awesome food would definitely work for the audience, I told myself.

Story-friendly

It all made sense after I made the pick. I planned to start the talk off with my famous spice mix-up metaphor: paprika powder and cinnamon look very similar. If you don't happen to label the containers, you might get more than what you bargained for next time you spice up your oatmeal.

Next, I wanted to introduce the main act of the story: my grandma. My grandma, with her collection of old lady fur caps. My grandma, with her religious beliefs that were so strong that she once took a picture of her TV set because the holy pope himself appeared in it. My grandma, with her amazing cooking recipes, that she wanted to share with the world by building an (accessible) website (that part is fictional).

I'm sure, this could have worked somehow, but something was missing. The spice mix-up intro didn't go so well with my grandma's endeavor. Too many storylines. Also, there was no real problem that the audience could identify with. As a consequence, I changed the story.

Instead of the spice mix-up opener, I came up with another idea. How about showing the fuse box in my apartment that has 8 switches but no apparent labels? If you wanted to turn off the power in my apartment, you can only guess which switch connects to which room.

After introducing the audience to the problem, I planned on showing its digital counterpart: an actual website with no apparent labels. At first, I wanted to make the audience believe that there's actually a website that has a header filled with unlabeled controls, making it unperceivable to anyone. Later, I reveal that what they have actually seen was the screen reader perception of the site that uses unlabeled icons.

Crowd-friendly

If you plan to talk about HTML code snippets for 30 minutes with an audience of UX designers, you will not make a lot of friends. Why not talk about the design of icons, forms and images instead? Know your audience.

I avoided code snippets altogether and planned to convey the message with a lot of visual examples. I planned on showing screenshots of user interfaces that failed to be used with screen readers. I decided to provide design tips on how to make everyone's life a little less confusing.

Another thing that I cared about when creating my talk was not to require previous knowledge for my audience to follow along. I aim to make my presentations as accessible as possible.

Labelling The Web: The Sequel

After I created the talk, I realized that the end result had a similar message to my original blog post but brought up new aspects of the same problem. I used a different story, different examples and came up with design tips for my audience to keep in mind.

Back in August, when I wrote Labelling The Web, I spent a lot of time thinking about a problem and wrote about it. Then, I created a talk out of it that was more audience-friendly and generated new ideas. In the end, I want to translate that back into a new blog post called "Labelling The Web 2".

How cool is that? A blog post, which turned into a talk, about to be turned back into a blog post again.

Turning your blog posts into talks

I like to tell stories, no matter if I write them on my blog or talk about them at an event. I'm a great storyteller.

And it's time to tell great stories.