Something I learned from HalvarFlake in 2019 that it can be quite painful to remember what conference one spoke in the past.

Giving a talk at a conference, event or appearing on a podcast is a big service for the community, who can learn from your experience. At the same time it is a testament to your impact and something to be proud of. It is cool to look back where you spoke 5 years ago and what topics you found relevant back then.

Such a list can be useful when trying to get a new job or to get more attention from hiring managers. It can serve to show your expertise in a specific field. Last but not least it can help future program committees in a paper review process to see your speaking abilities (if the review is not done blindly).

It also can prevent or reduce the risk of burnout. Seeing how much you spoke in the past gives you the ability to reflect the workload, additional workload added by preparing a talk which is usually forgotten when agreeing to speak. If you felt comfortable giving 5 talks a year, you might be well off giving 6. Agreeing on 15 however might be a big step up and should be done very carefully.

Since then I capture my speaking at a page of my page. I recommend you do the same every 6 months.

Items I recommend to capture:

• Date of talk / podcast
• Conference title
• Talk title
• Link to slides if available
• Link to a recording if available
• Link to blogpost from others covering your talk