The following talk is done by a professional, please don't try this at home! Today, we will give a non-technical talk in a tech event to advocate for non-technical talks in tech events! Tadaa!

We often judge tech events by the quality of their technical talks. And after all, why not? It seems totally fair as we probably go to these events to learn all the new info about our favorite tools, we want to learn the hot new good practices, we want inspiration, experience reports... We want to test new things and be blown away by shiny code! We say "YAY" when our favorite speakers are announced and wonder what the newbies will bring to the table!

Okay. But is a tech event really a good event without non-technical talks? Our jobs are to build tech but we are humans. Humans interacting with other humans. And it does impact our work. And we don't only build tech out of nothing, we do it for our users, who are (we can only hope) humans themselves. So thinking our work is only technical is akin to letting a whole unseen area from which big issues could arise go unnoticed. And I will argue in this talk that any good tech event should actually be judged on its non-technical talks rather than on the technical ones.