Even though I haven’t planned any virtual talks for online events, I did it anyway. I’ve got the opportunity to briefly explain Web Monetization to my fellow Tech Speakers, which I happily taken.
My last talk I’ve given before the pandemic was at the Gamedev.js Warsaw #15 meetup on February 11th 2020, and it was about the evolution of HTML5 games. I was actually switching the narrative from “web games with monetization” to “web monetization in games”, I even submitted a bunch of proposals around the world, where I’d talk about the new API using HTML5 games as examples. Covid happened, so the plans were cancelled, including two already confirmed talks for the end of March.
We didn’t have enough time or resources to run Gamedev.js Warsaw meetups online, and I couldn’t even consider looking for CFPs of online conferences, so I skipped that entirely. An interesting opportunity happened when I learned that the upcoming online Tech Speakers Briefing will be about Firefox DevTools and Grant for the Web.
Ali Spivak, who worked many years for Mozilla, moved to Coil. She was going to do the introduction of the Grant for the Web program, and we agreed it would be cool if I talked a bit about Web Monetization itself, and my dev experiences so far. Harald Kirschner then did an update about Firefox DevTools during the same call.
I think my presentation went well. I mean, the lighting is bad, I forgot to control the “uhm”s and have too monotonous voice, but I feel more comfortable talking than I used to. You can check the recording yourself if you want to though - it was suppose to be an internal recording only, but given there aren’t that many materials about Web Monetization yet I decided to publish it afterwards.
I couldn’t properly focus in the first few minutes as I was hearing loud background noise from one of the participants who didn’t mute his microphone, but after that was fixed it went smooth. I learned I’ll be presenting three days before the actual event, but I had the “evolution of HTML5 games” slides as the base, which helped with the preparations.