Season 1 · Speaking at Tech Conferences

John Collins

Episode: 43

Published on 14 November 2019

John Collins

John Collins is Director of Content with Intercom, the customer messaging platform. He’s a man who knows how to spread a message effectively, having worked as a tech journalist for more than 20 years.

In this edition of Fireside with Voxgig, John Collins from Intercom talks about how learning to be a great speaker is like making a cupcake. If you start small, you can perfect your skills and develop a brilliant public speaking career.

John Collins is Director of Content with Intercom, the customer messaging platform. He’s a man who knows how to spread a message effectively, having worked as a tech journalist for more than 20 years. He’s now responsible for producing the award-winning content at Intercom, including the blog, the podcasts, the books and the social media communications.

In our Fireside Chat, John talks about how Intercom has introduced a silent podcast disco to keep conferences fresh for audiences. He also shares a great analogy that Intercom came up with to help people learn to speak – that brilliant public speaking starts with a cupcake. When you’re learning to bake, you don’t plunge into making a wedding cake. You start with a cupcake and you perfect your skills. Similarly, in public speaking, when you start small, you achieve great things.

Find out more about Intercom’s cupcake-centric philosophy of developing skills, products and services at their website.

Back to all episodes

Get the Voxgig dispatch

Short notes on building SDKs, CLIs, MCP Servers, and REPLs for API-first teams, plus the occasional Fireside episode pick.

By signing up you agree to our Terms of use.