Notes on Engineering Leadership and Public Speaking

Chicago Roboto was back again this year as a single track conference and there were a lot of excellent talks.  Last year I gave a talk with my co-worker and product designer extraordinaire Jess Moon about design and development workflows and this year I was back again but as a Keynote speaker. Keynote Giving a keynote was a stretch goal I set for myself in 2018 and I managed to achieve it early thanks to the Chicago Roboto review committee. The topic I chose was being an Android Advocate who brings teams and communities together. I will be writing a follow up blog post about my keynote process soon but before that, a quick shout out to Corey Latislaw and my coworkers at Warner Bros. Digital Labs who took a look at my first and second drafts and listened to all my half-baked thoughts and ideas. Achievement unlocked 🎉🎉🎉 - Gave my first keynote @chicagoroboto #chicagoroboto Slides with resources available at https://t.co/OJVbZa3Akj — Yash Prabhu (@yashvpra...

I recently attended and spoke at Android Summit , an Android conference organized by the folks at Capital One. Special shoutout to Jared A Sheehan, Michael Jones and the entire organizing committee for running a fabulous event which raised $6000 for Women who Code. All speakers received a Phillips Hue Starter Kit as a speaker gift which I've used to toggle and dim my living room lights via Amazon Echo. So much fun! I had a prior commitment and could only attend Day 1 but here are my highlights. Process & Workflow A common theme on Day 1 was process and workflow talks which tied in beautifully with Kelly Shuster 's keynote. Kelly is an excellent story teller. In her keynote, she connected a story of communication from her theatre background to how developers, designers and testers need to work together to reduce boiler plate conversations when designing and developing apps. I gave a similar talk earlier this year at  Chicago Roboto  with my co-worker and designer...

Google I/O 2017 was a lot of fun and informative. I wish I had Hermione's Time-Turner as there were many talks to attend and many amazing people to meet. Here are some things I learned at I/O: AI & Machine Learning This year, I/O was all about AI on every Google product. A product mentioned at the Keynote was Google Lens which enables your smartphone to take pictures of an image like a flower and identify it. That's pretty helpful for a hobbyist gardener like me.  I also happened to drop by their  Android Experiments  sandbox and play the AI powered  Quick Draw  with fellow I/O attendees. Google Assistant  Google's voice assistant is available on many devices now - not just on your Google Home & Pixel phones but on Android TV as well as iPhone. It's also available on more languages and has an  Assistant SDK . You can build an app fairly quickly with Actions on Google and there is a challenge at  g.co/ActionsChall...

I had a lot of professional growth goals this year and that included speaking, blogging and engaging my community more. I ended up doing a lot more in 2016 than 2015.  My goal for 2017 is to keep it simple and do less :) January Wrote abstracts for all the conferences I wanted to attend/speak at and laid the groundwork for the year ahead. February Ran my first Android Study Jam for Google Developers Group(GDG)/Android Alliance Philly which I co-organize. March Gave a lightning  talk at GDG/Android Alliance Philly on RecyclerViews which was part of my talk on Material Design implementation for Developers April Gave a  talk  at GDG/Android Alliance Philly on Material Design implementation for Developers. May Did an AMA with the AnDevCon Boston team to promote my talk on Material Design. Attended the global GDG conference in San Francisco and Google I/O in Mountain View which was a blast as I got to hang out with me...

This is probably going to be one of several blog posts related to ElaConf . It's a wonderful conference for empowering women in tech that took place in Philly for the second time recently. One of the breakout sessions at ElaConf was on Technical Blogging which was run by Vaidehi Joshi ( @vaidehijoshi ). Here are my takeaways from that session. We started off by reading Julia Evans' blog post on  processes . Vaidehi asked us to take a few minutes to read it and discuss with a partner. Here are some things that stood out to us in the blog post: Conversational Matter of fact Formatted Code snippets Author's personality shows in the code comments Condensed scope, author links to external content for more research Good introduction to the topic even for a newbie We also took some time doing a fun exercise, with one of us pretending to be a student and the other a teacher. The teacher had to describe " opening a Facebook account to someone who has not used a...

Every month at Android Alliance which I help organize, we have a monthly speaker and a few lightning talks. Someone in the Phillydev  Slack group's android-philly channel  suggested  doing a panel  for the June meetup. I have been a panelist before but this time I wanted to try moderating. To prepare for that, I googled how to be a moderator and found Cate Huston's blog on moderating as well as this book - The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels  recommended by Cate. The book is a quick read on moderating panels and has several pointers on how to moderate effectively.   Of course, a panel is only as good as its panelists and moderator. For the panelists, I reached out to Corey , Travis , Nick & Arpit .   Here are some things I set out to do as a moderator: Set the tone When we start an event at Android Alliance, we go around and ask everyone to say their name, what they do and a fun fact about themselves. This usu...

Recently, I was interviewed in a Hangout on Air for promoting my upcoming talk on Material Design implementation at AnDevCon Boston . You can find the entire interview along with some of my answers on their site . Prior to going live, I asked my friend @chiuki on tips for doing Hangouts on Air. You can read her suggestions on her  blog . Some of the things I learned from my experience were: Make sure you have a non-distracting background. Post on social media about the hangout before you go live. Get on the hangout at least 15 minutes early to deal with technical difficulties if any. Our hangout on air was very smooth because I got on about 20 minutes early and we made sure the audio and video were fine. Get to know your interviewer: Mike from AnDevCon Boston and I talked to each other about our recent Google I/O experience before going live. Have some talking points written down ahead of your interview so you don't blank out when you are asked questions. Thank ever...

Last week I was in San Francisco and Mountain View for two conferences - Global Google Developer Groups(GDG) Summit & Google I/O 2016.  Day 0: GDG Summit The annual global GDG Summit is held every year before Google I/O. GDG is a community run group for Google technology enthusiasts. You can learn more about the Philly group here . The global summit  is where GDG organizers from all over the world who are attending Google I/O gather and catch up with other organizers. Some of the fun things we did were the sharing table before the summit and a Firebase, lego and Arduino workshop at the summit. Sharing is caring. Awesome cultural sharing table at the pre- #io16 GDG Dinner. pic.twitter.com/9uGc8nQJd5 — Zarah Dominguez (@zarahjutz) May 17, 2016 Firebase & Lego Arduino workshop #gdgsummit pic.twitter.com/biqlog3Tn4 — Yash Prabhu (@yashvprabhu) May 17, 2016 Night 0: Women Techmakers Dinner The day before Google I/O...

I was inspired by this  post  by femgineer to write my own post about acknowledging my accomplishments of the past year. One of my 2015 resolutions was a continuation of the previous years' - Be more active in the tech community . This goal was big enough to try out different things so I pretty much said YES to any opportunity that came along. 2015 was my year of firsts. Here's my list of tech accomplishments in chronological order: First-time team lead at work Submitted my first abstract to a conference (and many more after that!) Wrote my first blog post Gave my first technical talk at the Android Alliance meetup Gave my first technical conference talk at AnDevCon Boston  (and DroidCon NYC after that!) Hosted my first luncheon at AnDevCon Boston Was a first time panelist on Girl Develop It's A Day in the life of a Developer series Was interviewed for the first time on Youtube for Android Dialogs Gave my first non-technical conference talk at ElaC...

I gave my first non-tech talk at ElaConf Nov 2015 last weekend. ElaConf is a conference that empowers women in tech and its proceeds all go to Girl Develop It . Learn more about it at elaconf.com . Why do I call my talk non-tech ? Because the talk does not feature any code and it does not feature any technical problem that I solved. My talk was titled "Preparing for your first talk" but it's applicable to anyone who is preparing for any kind of talk - technical or otherwise. I was inspired to give this talk after writing this detailed blog post on how I prepared for my first big conference . Some of my tips and tricks were very well captured by the wonderful artist who was sketch-noting at the conference as well as one of the attendees. Your 1st talk w/ @yashvprabhu #elaconf pic.twitter.com/EVFLedMQgQ — ELA Conf (@elaconf) November 21, 2015 Lots of great presentation advice from @yashvprabhu ! ✨ #elaconf pic.twitter.com/fN5SVlKzE8 — Alyssa Dill (@alyssadill) N...

Last Friday, I gave a talk at AnDevCon Boston. I had about 4 months to prepare since the conference's C all for Proposal(CFP) deadline was in March and the conference was in July. "Monetize Apps on the Play Store: Integrating in-app Billing in Your #Android App w/ @yashvprabhu at #AnDevCon http://t.co/Pw1ZKy5Fek — AnDevCon (@AnDevCon) June 30, 2015 I have broken down my entire process of giving a presentation - from writing an abstract to giving the final talk into the following steps: Choosing a conference and submitting a proposal Breaking down the topic into smaller components Giving my talk at a local meetup Prepping for the conference Prepping hours before the talk Choosing a conference and submitting a proposal The whole process of giving a talk started at the Write/Speak/Code conference which happened earlier this year in March. On Day 1 of the conference, I wrote down several topics that I have expertise in. I settled down...