Your First Contribution to NativeScript: A Meet Up
March 13, 2019 — by Emil Tabakov
A month ago, we launched the NativeScript First-Time Contribution Program. Since then we heard about awesome things our community members are doing to share their success with the framework. This blog post is part of a series that aims to help everyone jump on this ship and find his own way to tell his NativeScript story.
So, you are super excited about NativeScript and you want to tell everyone about it. You are looking for a more direct way to interact with your audience, than writing a blog post and you keen on brushing up your public speaking skills. Well, organising a meet up might be just want you are looking for.
Finding Your Stage
You want to find that right audience that will be interested in what you have say and will be engaged. For NativeScript related talks - a NativeScript local user group is an obvious choice. If there is no such in your region (why don't you start one?) - there several other good opportunities:
Vue.js groups - NativeScript officially supports the vue.js framework and your talk will be interested to those web developers looking to expand their capabilities into building mobile applications, using their favourite framework.
Angular groups - Angular has been a first-class citizen from the early days of the NativeScript framework. Usually Angular devs who tried NativeScript are amazed by how similar is their experience to what they are used to.
Mobile development groups - The common attendee in these groups already is into mobile development and will be able to appreciate the experience you are sharing. Chances are that what you have to say will relate directly to issues and situations he or she is facing today.
Your company - Arguably, the easiest way to start with public speaking is to do it with people you familiar and comfortable. If you think that your direct colleagues or other teams in your company could benefit from NativeScript - this can be a great knowledge sharing opportunity.
The Content
Know your audience and adjust the content of your talk to be relevant and engaging for the people you are talking to. While in most cases a general "What is NativeScript and how it works" talk will be a great fit, you can spice it up with something that your audience would appreciate. Some ideas could be - show how the Angular or Vue.js integration work if you are talking to framework specific group. Or you might tune your demos to be focused on regionally important topic or include some local humour (take a look at this cheesy talk by Jen in Amsterdam).
If you are wondering what content to include in your introductory talk about NativeScript, here is good list to start with:
What is NativeScript and why does it matter for you?
How does it work underneath? A quick overview of the architecture is always interesting and gives a good context about possible competitive advantages. A good point of reference can be found in the Technical Overview article in the documentation.
What can I do with it? A quick demo always attracts a lot of attention, especially if it's relevant to the audience. You can use the Playground as a great way to showcase the framework without the need to setup everything locally and reducing the risk something to not work during the demo. Bonus feature is that people can follow along your demo on their own devices with the Preview app.
How to get started? Leave your audience with a clear next step for them - going through the Interactive Tutorials in the Playground ensure a smooth and easy getting started experience.
An excellent example for a "Getting Started with NativeScript" talk is Rob's performance during DevReach 2018. Take a look at it and get inspired about your own story:
If you have questions about your talk - get in touch with us and we will be happy to provide guidance and feedback.
The Delivery
Public speaking is a science on its own and I'm far from being an expert in it. But you can learn from the experts in this field. I find this TED talk a really nice and practical crash course into making great talks and this guy knows what he is talking about:
If you are still not convinced that you want to jump on this ship, I would like to share with you the person that motivated me and gave me the last kick that I needed to do my first talk in front of people. That's David Neal and his "You. Are. Awesome." talk.
And after you are done with everything, don't forget to fill-in the Application Form for the Contribution Program and claim your reward. We would love to hear from you, how everything went.
