Melinda Seckington

Founder & speaker coach at Learn Build Share. Loves books, escape rooms, Disney and @cbetta. She/her.

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

People at #LeadDevLondon were asking about slides/video of my Level Up talk and the video/blog posts of my past talks.

So here's a thread for all that!

1. You can now find the slides for my Level Up talk here:
https://t.co/VBFBSXuW0D

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

I’m in the #LeadDevLondon conference guide!

Wearing that dress today cause:

1. It has pockets.
2. It has a collar under which I can hide the lanyard.
3. It has pockets.
4. It’s bright and colourful.
5. It has pockets.
6. It’s super comfy.
7. Did I mention it has pockets?

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Now on to Day 2!

If you want to chat more about how to get started with speaking or how to skill up your engineers, come find me during the breaks!

What are your takeaways from Day 1 of LeadDevLondon? What are you hoping to learn on Day 2?

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Also, thanks to everyone who came along to the How To Become A LeadDev Contributor, where I got to share some of my thoughts on how to write talk descriptions and how I got into speaking.

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Got a bit of FOMO of not being able to go to everything, but regardless of what you choose you’ll end up with an intriguing discussion! I spoke to folks about how engineers define & perceive re-orgs, how we can encourage engineers to learn and more. So many ideas to process!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Beyond the talks though I got to take part in various activities during the day! I loved how many things were going on: table talk discussions, community representation groups, AMAs, coaching, there was so much to choose from!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

🎢Dominika Pietrzak sharing how to identify what we find cool, so we can delegate not-cool-to-us-but-cool-to-others work!

💻Renee Hunt highlighting how technology is key in every organisation right now and how our tech skills & backgrounds are needed in higher management roles.

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Highlights for me were:

👾Parul Singh talking about supporting neurodiversity in our teams, with some lovely video game references and slides!

🏢Nickolas Means telling us the history of the Barbican, since this is the last year LeadDev will be hosted here!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Great first day at #LeadDevLondon yesterday!

So inspired by the thought-provoking talks and hallway conversations! I didn’t catch all the talks cause I was also doing some behind-the-scenes speaker coaching, but the ones I did see were great!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

I’m also doing some behind-the-scenes speaker coaching, so if you’re giving a talk today/tomorrow and want to do a practice run or talk through anything, let me know!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

I’m at #LeadDevLondon today! If you’re here too, come find me and say hi!

I’ll be on a panel later today during the networking drinks, about how to become a LeadDev contributor! I’ll be sharing tips & tricks on coming up with talk ideas, writing talk proposals and more!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Do you get super nervous before going on stage for a talk?

I do too.

In my latest post, I share 5 ways to boost your confidence, helping you to calm down and get into the right mindset.

https://t.co/iFeBWv6dpn

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Learning from great speakers and getting to meet other managers was so key to helping me become a better manager. And I’ve loved sharing my own experiences as well.

So I’m excited that with these meetups, there will be more opportunities for leads to learn from each other!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

The LeadDev London Meetups are back! I can’t wait for this community to come together more often beyond just the conferences. 🙌

The first one will be April 11th, and there are still plenty of tickets available! Who will join me there?

[LeadDev @TheLeadDev]

After a three-year hiatus, LeadDev Meetups are making a comeback! 🎉

Join us for the special relaunch event in partnership with @incident.io and @monzo on 11/04 and enjoy an evening of networking and lightning talks. Drinks and nibbles will also be pro... https://t.co/YvK2X31rXp

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

I still remember attending my first LeadDev back in 2015. I had just started managing engineers for the first time and was still figuring out so many new things. It was still fairly smallish at the time, but the atmosphere and community was exactly what I needed.

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

To help with that, I’m kicking off my latest blog post series:

📚The Art of Story Design📚

This first post looks at several story structures from fictional storytelling, that we can consider when designing conference talks.

https://t.co/JabjAbwwIb

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had to sit through a lot of messy, unstructured and frankly boring conference talks.

She realised it was one of the challenges many speakers faced: how do you tell an engaging story?

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Excited to be at #ProductCon today! Anyone else I know also here? Let me know if you want to meetup during the break!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Using things like colour to highlight information and make it more memorable, is what the third blog post in my Art of Slide Design series is all about!

https://t.co/hz5AZ6YpWS

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

The most surprising thing I learnt from my high school history teacher: how to take good notes!

He'd use a red pen for dates, a green pen for important names & phrases and a black pen for everything else. I still will recall historic dates in my mind in red because of this!

[Melinda Seckington @mseckington]

Lazy London Question: I’m looking for cosy cafes in central London that do a decent tea, hot chocolate or matcha! What are your go-tos?

Bonus points if they have comfy armchairs and sofas.