Last year, I spoke for the first time at GopherCon! I was so grateful for this experience as I have always wanted to speak at GopherCon since first hearing about it on Go Time. As my lightning talk was just posted, I wanted to share a bit on the experience, what I learned, and what has changed since then.

First things first, here is the talk recording: Not Your Parent’s Editor: A Gopher’s Guide to Neovim

The idea

I have been a Vim user for a while, and have encountered a lot of people criticizing me for it saying it’s not as efficient or feature-rich. I don’t see myself as an elitist, I think everyone should use what works best for them. However, it has been a great environment for me as I learned how to code and I wanted to demystify it for others. I did submit this as a full talk originally, but it was not accepted. I applied to do it as a lightning talk instead after deciding to attend GopherCon and was accepted!

Preparing the talk

I had a loose idea in mind of how I wanted this talk to go, where I demoed each individual plugin and how it helped me. However, as I started to prepare, I realized that this would take too long and was not very engaging. I pivoted to showing how I would do a pretty common refactor and call out plugins as I went along. This made it a bit more engaging and faster paced.

I demoed the talk to my husband, coworkers, and some friends (both technical and non-technical) and got great feedback. After that it was just practicing over and over again until I had the muscle memory down.

The talk

I was pretty nervous going into the talk, but the GopherCon team and other speakers were so kind and supportive. I did mess up a bit during the demo, but it wasn’t too noticeable unless you’re already a vim expert. Bonus points if you can spot it in the recording! The audience was super engaged and I got some great questions from individuals after the talk.

What’s changed?

Since giving the talk, the Copilot CLI was finally released and I have been integrating it using sidekick.nvim which is made by the legendary folke.

One thing I didn’t get to mention is my use of Chezmoi to manage my dotfiles. It is so nice if you leverage multiple machines and virtual development environments such as GitHub Codespaces. It makes it super easy to keep everything in sync and revert if anything goes astray.

What did I learn?

Feedback is key

I learned a lot from this experience. First, getting feedback early is key. I attempted to get feedback as early as the CFP stage, which helped with refining my idea. I think it’s important to keep your audience at the forefront of your mind and put yourself in their position. For this talk, I wanted to make sure that both Vim users and non-Vim users could get something out of it and therefore I got feedback from both groups.

Stay humble

Second, impostor syndrome will never go away. While I use Neovim primarily, my usage is definitely not perfect and I knew there would be people in the audience who knew more than me. It was important to stay humble and acknowledge that I could offer a unique perspective as someone who’s not a typical Vim power user. I actually learned new things from others in my experience giving the talk that I might’ve not learned otherwise!

Social anxiety doesn’t go away

I get pretty extreme social anxiety with having conversations with new people, especially in large groups. While I was able to get through the talk, I found it difficult to network and meet new people at the conference and had a bit of a panic attack during the speaker happy hour. I do fine while presenting or if I’m approached, but this reminds me that I need to keep working on my social skills and putting myself in uncomfortable situations to grow.

Conclusion

Doing a lightning talk was a great experience as a first talk and the perfect length for dipping my toes into speaking! I am so grateful for the opportunity and am excited to apply for my next speaking opportunity. If you have any questions about my talk or feedback, feel free to reach out!