My OSCON 2014 Proposal - The Case for Haskell

I just finished submitting my proposal for OSCON 2014. After two days of brainstorming, I feel pretty good about what I’ve come up with. This talk:

1. Is about something I’m passionate about
2. Is a talk I would give even if I wasn’t accepted
3. Requires me to learn even more thoroughly what I’m proposing to speak on It’s an opportunity to learn!

For those of you that would like to submit a proposal in the future, I have two thoughts to share with you.

First - DO IT! If you have something you’d love to share, get it out there. You are Allowed to Apply.

Secondly, if you need a simple video recording solution (I was on Linux, I used my laptop web cam, and I lacked a proper camera), I’m recommending the YouTube Recording interface. Given the capabilities of HTML5, I wasn’t entirely surprised that such a thing existed. However, I was pleased with the outcome. It certainly worked for me, and worked better than either Cheese of Guvcview.

More on the process:

I must’ve re-re-recorded myself at least 10 times in trying to express my abstract. It took practice. It was scary the first time around. I stumbled on words. I ran out of breath. I forgot where I was. It got easier as I got into the cycle of editing my script, tweaking, optimizing, and simplifying. It was very similar to developing, testing, and refactoring. There is Zen in all of this.

So that was it. Lots and lots of practice. Now, the long wait.

Oh, and by the way - sharing is caring: here’s the link to watch my video proposal: The Case for Haskell

Let me know what you think. As suggested by (2) above, I intend to give this talk whether or not I’m accepted to speak at OSCON, so let me know if there’s something that you’d love to hear about!