How to Give Away Your Company’s Trade Secrets

Blogging for industry peers doesn’t hurt your company’s competitive advantage, but actually strengthens it. In this talk, you’ll learn what engineering and technical blogs are, how having a blog can empower your team and benefit your organization, and how to start one at your company.

Tech is a competitive industry. There’s often this perception that to outperform rival companies, you have to keep the details of your processes and tech stack a tightly guarded secret. However for plenty of organizations, sharing your experiences, your successes, and your failures with the world at large can become a competitive advantage in its own way.

A technical blog is a fantastic way to publicize your team’s work. In this talk, you will be introduced to the concept of a company technical blog and how it differs from an “engineering” blog. After seeing examples of technical blogs from well-known companies such as Netflix, Slack, and Airbnb, you’ll learn about the ways that a technical blog can benefit your organization, from employee satisfaction to recruiting. Finally, you will leave this talk equipped with tips on how to start a technical blog at your company and deal with challenges you may face.

This should be a relatively straightforward presentation. I don’t intend to do any live demoing or require Internet access, so all I should need is a projector.

I’m extremely qualified to give this talk because I started the technical blog at my company in late 2017. You can view it at https://building.niche.com/. I saw all of the incredible work that my colleagues and I were doing, and realized that the challenges we face are likely relatable (or at least interesting) to other companies and individuals in tech. So often, a blog post from a big, well-known company will go viral, but it’s important as smaller companies to also talk about the difficult technical challenges we face, and how we overcome them with fewer resources.

I’m excited about giving this presentation because I’m passionate about knowledge sharing in tech. Creating a culture with a bias towards openness and transparency helps make the industry more inclusive and accessible to everyone.

I’m also excited because I really enjoy talking at tech conferences. I previously gave a talk about code linting at Pittsburgh TechFest on June 2, 2018, and had a great experience doing so. You can see an attendee’s testimonial at https://twitter.com/Sirius_B/status/1003026918336278529

Thank you so much for your consideration :)