A Sitecore User Group is a great way to introduce yourself to the Sitecore community, network with your fellow Sitecorians, and share knowledge that could help other members of the community. User groups can also be an excellent gateway into presenting on Sitecore specific topics. Local user groups are where any number of people hone their SUGCON and Sitecore Symposium skills, and they help individuals gain valuable experience in public speaking that is cross-applicable to a lot of professional arenas.
Public speaking is always nerve-wracking, but there are a few tips that I’ve discovered that I believe are almost universally applicable.
Topics don’t have to be game-changers to be valuable
Everyone wants to write the code snippet that fixes the Sitecore problems of the world, but your topic doesn’t have to be astonishing to be useful. When I ask why someone doesn’t present at a Sitecore user group, almost the first thing I hear is “I don’t have anything interesting to say.” I guarantee that isn’t true. As professionals we spend so much time immersed in our work that we forget that not everyone does the same things we do. In fact, hardly anyone does.
Tip: write down the top five things you do in Sitecore every single day and take a few minutes to search for documentation or blog posts on those topics. See what’s out there. The results might surprise you.
It’s good to be nervous
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten was this: if you’re not nervous, it doesn’t matter enough. There are a lot of tips and tricks on how not to be nervous before speaking publicly, but I think your nerves are a positive. And honestly, they’re not going anywhere. That’s a good thing; it means that you care about the subject and the community.
Tip: Practice. Practice in front of your mirror, your pets, out loud in your house, and then ask a few of your coworkers to listen to your presentation during the lunch break and give you feedback. 9 times out of 10 they’ll have solid comments and ask the kinds of questions that you’ll get in a Q&A. There’s no such thing as wasted time when you’re practicing.
There’s never a perfect time to get started
If you’re waiting for the planets to align and usher in the perfect moment before you volunteer…well, there’s no such thing. There are times that are better than others (I would not, for example, suggest signing up to present for a Sitecore user group that’s scheduled for the day after a major project deadline), but the perfect time is never going to come along. Putting off presenting until the perfect time means that you’re unlikely to ever get started.
Tip: Find a local Sitecore user group and get your name on the calendar. There’s nothing like a commitment to get the ball rolling.
Having fun is a top priority
Finding a topic that you love is key. If you are passionate about what you’re presenting, that passion shines through. Enthusiasm is the Chemical X that transforms a presentation because it brings with it a level of engagement that can’t be generated any other way.
Tip: Take a look at that list you made. Consider which one you’d most like to discuss at a round table, or over tapas after a convention. That’s the topic you want.
There are any number of reasons to present at a Sitecore user group, both personal and professional. The first step is the hardest. But after taking the leap, you’ll be surprised by how much fun it is, and how ready you are to do it again!
Anyone who attended the Sitecore Symposium this year may have noticed another focus grabbing people’s attention above and beyond the innovative new ways that Sitecore is pushing its platform. Often you will see a lot of different groups at the Symposium: Partners, Sitecore Employees, Clients, MVPs, Strategists, Technologists, Marketers, etc. But this year one group stood out and made their voices heard: Women, and I feel honored to have been a part of that awakening.
The Sitecore world is a microcosm of the larger Technology world and has similar statistics around women technologists: not enough (somewhere around 10-15%). Those of us who have been in technology for many years are aware of that and many of us have been complacent about it. I know I was. I was too busy to think about it and I didn’t see it as an issue. My company recognized me and we have women in leadership and engineering roles. We are compensated well and given opportunities for advancement. I dismissed it without much thought.
In the last few years, as I joined the ranks of the Sitecore MVPs (Sitecore’s selective Most Valuable Professional program), I had been proud to be one of perhaps half a dozen women MVPs and an even smaller subset of women Technologist MVPs. With each year there were a few more. But the percentage to the whole remained woefully low, and now that I think about it, instead of being proud, it should have been a wakeup call to do more.
When we attended the MVP summit each year, the women would break the ice with each other joking about how we could use the bathroom without worrying about a wait. Deep down, we were feeling a little intimidated and likely lonely. Meanwhile, in the larger technology world, organizations and movements like Women in Tech, Girls Who Code, and Move the Dial have been raising awareness. And as our MVP group got bigger, the idea of doing something to explicitly make it bigger started to take hold.
To be a Sitecore MVP means that you are a self-motivator, with a good balance of ambition, intelligence, and support. Every single person who has achieved it likely has similar personality traits, regardless of the role they hold. This means that it was inevitable that a mental shift was coming for the women involved with Sitecore.
It started out this year with Isabel Tinoco (fellow Sitecore MVP at Coveo) creating blog posts highlighting women MVPs. This was the first spark that got the group talking to each other. Then as Sitecore put out their call for Symposium presentations, the flame of an idea was lit: bring together the women MVPs onto a panel presentation at the 2018 Sitecore Symposium and discuss empowering women in Sitecore, with the hope that our stories could help other women who had a love for Sitecore and Technology.
In the early summer, Amy Winburn started the Women of Sitecore group: an inclusive group for ANY woman interested in Sitecore (independent from the Symposium panel, although several women are involved in both and form much of the leadership team). A Slack group formed, a twitter feed was opened, #womenofsitecore, a website created: http://www.womenofsitecore.com to host all kinds of helpful content, and Dua’a Abu Gharbieh created the most amazing Women of Sitecore logo.
Shortly thereafter, Sitecore (as an organization) also started pushing to support the idea of more women in tech, including the July kickoff and recognition of their internal Women of Sitecore program during their GSKO. For Symposium, Sitecore organized a 2 hour plated luncheon with an inspiring guest speaker, Jodi Kovitz, CEO of Move the Dial, a non-profit organization dedicated to getting more women involved in technology.
Then the news came through that our MVP Panel session was selected. Now we had to come up with how to fit the stories and life lessons from 18 women into a 45 minute segment. We brainstormed and finalized 6 areas to be covered by 3 women each:
Why having a community matters
Why organizations benefit from enabling more women in roles of technology and leadership
What are the barriers that women in tech feel that we as a community can help overcome
In what ways may an organization be inadvertently creating a gender gap
How women can balance a personal life with the demands from a career in technology
How we can inspire and develop the newest generation of women looking to grow their careers in technology
It was an eye-opening experience planning for these topics, talking to the other women, and reading up on it all. There are some companies that are better than others at inclusion, but ALL can improve in various areas of awareness. Some women have personal situations that are better off to support them and others need help. There is a lack of education in younger girls about what a career in technology even means, the opportunities that await within it, and that they can get into it and still be into the outdoors and fashion and daylight 🙂 As a company, it is in its best interest to have more women in the tech and leadership ranks. There are proven success metrics to back that up. And that company may be inadvertently sabotaging their ability to do just that! Most importantly, I realized it isn’t just about whether I have been able to succeed, but that I have a responsibility to pay it forward, be there for others, and raise awareness.
Meanwhile, the snowball continued to get bigger and bigger. Mark Stiles generously reached out to me and asked how he could help. He volunteered his excellent videographer skills and offered to film a few of us in a round table discussion while we were all gathered in Orlando. Swag from tshirts, to buttons, to stickers were quickly thought up and executed upon in short order, women donating their own money towards the cause. Sitecore started reaching out to find several women in the community for short video spots that would air at the start of the luncheon.
It all finally culminated in a whirlwind 4 days (5 days for MVPs staying later for the summit) at the Symposium in October. Every women who attended spoke to what a difference it felt like this year compared to others. Sure, we all thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Sitecore’s strategy, vision and the underlying tech, partaking in various festivities, and the good-natured competitive environment that is common for Sitecore partners while at such an event. But there was something really special about this year, it meant more. It’s hard to put into words. Whether it was while practicing in the speaker room a few times with our 18 co-presenters, or sitting down to a cup of coffee at the breakfast tables reserved for us, or just sharing a quick moment as we passed another woman wearing a pin or tshirt, there was a shared comradery that crossed the artificial lines of role, status, and company. We knew we had each other’s backs if we needed it.
Now we are back to our respective homes and caught up in our typical day to day routines. This is where the hard part comes in, this is where we have to keep it up and keep being there for each other and the people who have not yet discovered this community. This is where we continue to DO SOMETHING and turn the words into actions. We push for changes at our companies, we visit the local schools and educate about how cool our field is before the girls get to college and have a major in mind, we reach out for mentors and offer up our own mentorship, we write blog posts, we support each other. It’s an exciting time to be a woman in technology and I can’t wait to see what this group of amazing women does next!
