On the 21st of March 2026, I attended my first ever Code Camp Wellington AND also gave my first ever tech conference talk!
Code Camp Wellington
Code Camp is a free tech conference in New Zealand and offers a variety of talks and speakers. There are several tracks for the talks – Careers & Teams, Hot & New, Cool & Fun, and Code on Screen. It is also entirely volunteer-run! You can find out more about it on their website .
This was my first time attending Code Camp. My goal was to learn about new ideas and meet new people (plus reconnect with familiar faces), and I can happily say I did all that!
Even as an introvert, I really enjoyed meeting everyone and all the conversations we had. Everyone was so approachable and eager to just make new friends. After I did my talk, a few people also reached out to me because they resonated with something I mentioned in my talk, which made the connection extra memorable. I rarely do this, but this time I actually took selfies with almost everyone I met because I wanted to remember that moment in time. Might sound odd, but as someone who works remotely, I cherish any IRL interactions with my colleagues and new people haha.
Here are some of my favourite talks:
From Senior to Staff: To infinity and beyond by Thong Kuah
- Very practical advice and helped to demystify the senior engineering career ladder. His slide deck is available here .
How I took a career break by Prae Songprasit
- Loved the storytelling! Really appreciated the level of vulnerability and openness in this talk. It gave me lots of food for thought on how to reflect on my own career journey. Her speech is available here as a transcript and recording.
The Habits of Fast Developers by Sam Jarman
- Full of practical tips on how to be a better developer. Something that stuck with me is how he said to familiarise yourself with your tools, and that includes understanding what all those little icons at the bottom of your IDE do haha.
How to figure out what you want to do next by Katrina Clokie
- This talk was highly interactive and thought-provoking. We did a lot of facilitated networking ie talking to people who are in the same career stage as you and people who are further along in their journey. It was interesting to hear the similarities and differences in perspectives. One of the quotes that stood out to me was “Some people follow a career path, others make their own.” This was apparently a quote on a Mainfreight truck lol. Goes to show you that it’s all about observing the little things in life 😉 Btw Katrina does career coaching, so check out her website !
There were definitely other great talks too that I missed, but alas I had to make some sacrifices when picking which talks to attend!
Overall, the vibes were just 10/10 ❤️ Definitely my most memorable tech conference to date!
And yes, I vlogged the whole conference plus my Wellington trip (surprise, surprise haha) 😄 Check out the video for some armchair travelling around Wellington, including taking the ferry to Somes Island and checking out Wellington Zoo! (spoiler alert: there are lots of cute animals hehe)
My Talk
The title of my talk was “Building a Tech Career in Public (Even if You’re an Introvert)”.
Bold claim, right? 🤣
Here’s the talk description on the Code Camp website.
Now let me take you behind the scenes of this whole process. Truth be told, doing a talk was not the first thing that came to mind. After all, this was my first time attending Code Camp. It would have been much easier if I just attended as an attendee and absorbed information. Besides, why would I want to impose all this extra work on myself?
But then I thought about it again. Why not try? Like honestly, why not? I recently came across a quote that stuck with me: “Everything is a win when the goal is to experience.”
I think that is so true. It doesn’t matter if you fail or succeed, as long as you try and gain experience. Failure is just a data point for your next try.
And that is what inspired me to submit my talk proposal literally a few hours before the deadline. Because my goal is always to experience. To experience doing a talk at a tech conference in this case 🤣
After that, it was just a waiting game to see if my proposal would be selected.
When I saw the email from the organisers saying that my talk had been selected, I was both excited and terrified. Excited because I would be doing my first tech conference talk, and terrified because while I was previously just shooting my shot, it’s now a reality! I actually had to get to work.
I decided to speak about building in public and personal branding because it’s a topic I’m passionate about and till this day, is one of the top things I’m glad I started in my early twenties. I really believe in the concept of creating a serendipity vehicle for yourself because it essentially increases your surface area for luck.
What followed was weeks of ideation and countless iterations on the script and slides. I shared about how I began, my inspirations, reframing your mindset, and how to start (spoiler alert: you just have to start!).
Then it was D-Day.
Despite being an introvert, I actually enjoy public speaking. Not really something I would have expected of myself growing up as a shy kid lol. But years of doing startup pitches back in university (shout out to Red Bull Basement 2019 !) somehow unlocked this side of me I never knew existed. So yes, I’m not new to public speaking, but speaking at a tech conference to a technical audience? This was a first. I wasn’t sure how my talk would be received.
The goal of every talk I do (or content I create) is to provide value to my listeners. I want them to have a takeaway, whether that be them learning something new or feeling inspired. Safe to say, my talk went really well! The good thing about doing a talk IRL (rather than putting out a piece of content which you can only gauge reception through likes and comments) is that you can get real-time feedback from the audience’s expressions. And I won’t forget it. Everyone looked super engaged – they were nodding, smiling, taking photos of the slides etc – and that really touched me. Left a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart ❤️
Thank you so much to everyone who attended and all those who came up to me afterwards (in person and virtually!) to share how much they resonated with it. I look forward to seeing your posts! Also, shout out to those that tagged me on LinkedIn as one of your favourite talks 🥹
And for those who found out about my talk through Instagram / YouTube, thank you for your engagement! I guess that’s the power of sharing your work in public – you get to connect with people internationally too!
With all that being said, you can watch my talk here ! PS I must apologise in advance though for the bad “lip syncing” because unfortunately as I was filming my talk, the microphone wasn’t recording 🤡 I was actually so depressed when I found out but alas, such is life 🥲 I ended up having to record a voiceover.
If you read till the end of this blog post, first of all, thank you very much and here’s a cookie hehe 🍪
Secondly, if you don’t remember any of what you read, I hope you remember these two things:
1. “Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you”
This was the essence of my talk. You don’t need to be perfect to start sharing your work. If what you share inspires just one person, that’s already a win. And you never know what opportunities it may lead you to.
2. Take that first step and don’t think about the outcome
If I hadn’t taken that first step to submit my talk proposal, none of this would have happened. But because I did, I managed to connect with lots of like-minded people and hopefully inspire others to start building in public. And because I optimised for experience, it would have been a win either way! In case you’re wondering, speaking at a tech conference unlocks cool perks like a fancy speaker’s dinner and T-shirt 🤣
My first Code Camp and tech conference talk experience is definitely one for the books. Thank you so much to all the organisers and sponsors for making this possible ☺️