Speaking at TechMids 2025

Last Friday I attended my first TechMids conference in Birmingham: not just as a participant, but as a speaker. Despite having spoken at meet-ups for many years now, this was my first time speaking at a conference. It was a brilliant experience!

The conference

I arrived in Birmingham the night before, ahead of Storm Claudia. Thankfully, I stayed a short distance from the conference venue, the Everyman Cinema, and missed most of Friday's torrential rain. Safely inside the cinema the energy was contagious. This was a very well attended conference and there was a buzz of activity on arrival.

TechMids is a community driven one-day tech conference. There was a wide variety of topics being covered across three separate screens. The quality of the talks was amazing and at times it was difficult to decide which to attend.

Some personal highlights for me:

• Daniel Tallentire’s talk on talking tech to non-technical folk, with some nice use of metaphors
• Guy Barker’s talk on making apps accessible using a game of Patience as an example (it was great to see the room filling up for an accessibility talk)
• Indy Pahal’s talk about leadership and management – he made some great points about balancing personality types within a team
• Oliver Davies’ talk on Nix for PHP developers, this has inspired me to check this out for myself
• Shaun Lawrence’s talk on using .Net to brew beer – I’m not a .Net developer, but it’s great to see people still coding for fun

My talk

Of course, one of the main reasons for my attendance was to get up and speak. A year ago, speaking at a conference wasn’t even on my bucket list; I was quite content talking at ‘local’ meet-ups. That all changed when I was encouraged to submit a talk to Front End North, a Sheffield (therefore super local) conference.

I was selected as a backup speaker for Front End North, and so had a talk prepared and rehearsed. In the end, I wasn’t needed, but attending the conference, and coming close to the opportunity, inspired me to try again.

I submitted my ‘Ulysses versus The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ talk to TechMids and was selected for the conference.

Despite some initial anxiety before the event, when the day arrived that all disappeared. I found myself so engaged with the conference and the talks I was attending that my only fear was forgetting to be in the right screen at the right time!

I deliberately didn’t look at my notes or slides once I was down in Birmingham. I had practiced plenty before and had given the talk at the dotNetSheff meet-up the previous week. I knew my slides. I knew what I wanted to say. I just soaked up the atmosphere and enjoyed the conference for myself.

When it came to my time, I got up and just enjoyed my time in the spotlight. Afterwards, I received lots of fantastic feedback and it was great to hear how my talk had resonated with different people.

The future

The whole experience has been incredible. I have left Birmingham eager to do it all again. I’ve long enjoyed public speaking, but conference speaking hadn’t been on the cards. It is now!

It can be so easy to become isolated in our industry. Community events like this are really important. I’ve learnt a lot from attending TechMids, been inspired, and made some new friends along the way. I’m already looking at which conference I can go to next, whether as a speaker or just an attendee.

Acknowledgements

There’s a few people I want to thank for my experience. Firstly, the TechMids organisers, especially Tom Goodman and James Constantinou for making me feel so welcome (and selecting my talk). Sam Biggins and Katie Fenn for believing in me. Their encouragement has been crucial in getting me here. Finally, my partner Jonathan who’s support throughout the ups-and-downs has been greatly appreciated.