Among the essential reasons I continue to make presentations at various conferences is that the preparation required to deliver good content forces me to learn and comprehend a topic in greater depth. I always try to talk about the stuff I am working on: the commitment to explaining what I am learning in public forces me into a higher level of knowledge.
In the past few weeks, I have spoken about OAuth2 at two different conferences, and OAuth2 has been precisely the subject of my work for the past few months, and it still is now. It goes like this: I study and implement things, and while doing that, I say to myself, hey, this could be an exciting topic for other devs, too. I let the idea cool down for a few days, and then, if it still seems good, I start looking for a fitting call for papers. Magic happens if the proposal is accepted: I am forced to turn from a superficial connoisseur to someone close to a field expert. That’s the level of competence to aim for if one wants to talk publicly, especially on a technical topic.
Something new happened yesterday. As I was writing the OAuth2 documentation for the next iteration of our APIs, I realized I could reuse some of the material from my live sessions. In the talk, it made sense to dedicate a few minutes to explain the OAuth2 Authorization Code Flow, so I used Obsidian Canvas to draw two diagrams, one with a high-level view of the flow while the other would zoom into the details. I could now take the first one, streamline and simplify it, and then include it in our official documentation. And that’s what I did.
Our documentation now includes the flow chart I conceived for the conference.
That presentation took a while to prepare, but the delivery was good. It took me to a new level of expertise, and part of that work landed in our product. It was all well worth the effort.