Dear Conference Organisers, Please Hire Me

TL;DR this is an open letter to people organising conferences in 2016 who are looking to fill slots on webbish subjects, tending towards software development, that would be both palatable and valuable to a commercially focused audience. If you’d like to discuss further then please email bealers@siftware.com, or call my office on 0845 680 9676.

Also, to my peers in the wider web community: if you think that I could have interesting things to say at the sort of conferences that you attend, then I’d really appreciate a shout-out to your conference organisers. I know it’s a bit awkward me asking like this, but I figured that if you don’t ask you don’t receive. Thanks 🙂


Dear Conference Organisers,

Your attendees are looking for ways to improve their lives, their careers or their businesses. They want value from every talk of yours that they sit through.

You want someone who is professional, pleasant to work with, who turns up and who provides value to your audience.

Whilst not a complete novice at public speaking, I am committed to doing a lot more of it during 2016 and I would relish the chance to pass along some of my knowledge at your conference.

I understand that you’ll be taking a risk with me. I don’t have a large speaking track record and I’m not a big draw; people have not heard of me.

Rest assured that I will deliver.

I am confident, reliable, motivated to succeed and, most importantly, I have lots of valuable experience to draw upon.

My talks follow, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to reserve me for one of your slots.

Web  Specific

Help! I Just Inherited This Web App. Where Do I Start?
20-40 minutes

Aimed either at the owner/manager of an existing web application or a web team who have just landed a large maintenance project.

It covers commercial as well as technical subjects, but at a high level suitable for the technical and non-technical alike. Rammed full of actionable advice from the get-go with a downloadable check-list provided at the end so you don’t have to make any notes. An excellent primer on the things to consider when taking ownership of a legacy project.

Why You Should Upgrade PHP on Your Server (and Your Hosting Too Whilst You’re at it)
20 minutes

In short: because speed, security, portability and it’s your reputation at stake.

There are still lots of servers running PHP 5.3 and even PHP 5.2 which stopped receiving security fixes one and nearly five years ago respectively. Upgrading will mean not only double-digit performance improvements, but will remove significant risk and be making the application more portable.

If you’re an agency or freelancer then it’s arguable that as the professionals you have a duty of care to your clients to educate them on the risks. That them spending pennies on old shared hosting is likely going to come and bite them one day. This talk will give you some tools to go back to your client and get the budget for that much-needed upgrade. If you’re the client, you’ll get to put together a list of questions ready to put to your existing development team to give you the peace of mind that you’re up-to-date.

Web Application Disaster Recovery and Contingency Planning
20-30 minutes

Yawn. Servers, right?

Yes, it’s not an exciting subject but neither is going to the dentist and you still do that every 6 months.

If you are responsible for a commercial web application whether you’re the owner or you’re looking after one for your client, then you need to consider what would happen if one or more components of the system are taken offline permanently. How quickly could you get it back on-line? Who do you call? What’s their number?

In this talk we’ll cover the things you should be considering for a disaster recovery plan and get you started on your way to implementing one.

Get it off your to do list and sleep easier at night.

Health & Lifestyle

Lifestyle choices for the successful geek
20-40 minutes

My journey from unhealthy, unhappy and stress induced burnout to being fit, healthy & motivated and now in training for the London marathon. All within 12 months and coming with the fringe benefit of losing 3 stone along the way.

No woo. No faddy diets. Just lots of simple, actionable advice based on things that have worked for me getting my diet, exercise regimen, workflows, business set-up, morning routines and even sleep patterns all optimised.

Live smarter and take care of yourself or, as you get older, bits of you are likely to start breaking!

If you feel that one of these subjects might be of interest to your audience, or if you’d like to discuss me tweaking the talk proposals then please don’t hesitate to email bealers@siftware.com, or call my office on 0845 680 9676.

Also, if you like to find out a bit more about me then please start at my about page.

Yours sincerely,

Darren Beale
25th November 2015


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