Adam's route to public speaking

Adam Bien: I attended the first JavaOne in 2000 and it was full of endless smart people. I couldn't even understand how they had gained such a huge amount of knowledge. I decided it would be great if I could speak at JavaOne, but trying to get a slot didn't work for seven years.

I tried to apply with reasonable topics, like what I was doing in projects, but everything was rejected. Then I submitted a talk on how I hacked my heating. That session got approved, strangely enough. That was just a pet project that I did on the weekends, but off the back of that talk, I became a "JavaOne Rockstar," which only means that the attendees liked my session.

Since then, it has been easier for me to get my talks approved. The heating talk had nothing to do with my work and I would probably not even speak about that topic nowadays because there's no real added value for the audience.

Geertjan Wielenga: But these Internet...