Pluralsight author Barry Luijbregts speaks with developer Scott Hanselman about becoming an impactful teacher, the importance of humor in presenting, and much more. This episode originally aired on The Developer Weekly Podcast.

• Scott's website and blog
• The Hanselminutes podcast
• Scott's YouTube channel

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Please send any questions or comments to podcast@pluralsight.com.

Speaker 1:

Hello, and welcome to All Hands on Tech. Today's episode is actually borrowed from the developer weekly podcast. Pluralsight author, Azure Barry recently launched this podcast and he surfaced this specific episode is one that All Hands on Tech listeners would enjoy. In this episode, Barry speaks with developer Scott Hanselman about teaching, the importance of humor and learning, and much, much more. We'll include links in the show notes to subscribe to the developer weekly podcast if you haven't already. Otherwise, I'll turn it over to Barry to introduce Scott

Barry:

This week, I'm talking with Scott Hanselman about learning and teaching. Scott is a web developer who has been blogging at hanselman.com for over a decade. He works in Open Source on ASP.NET and the Azure Cloud for Microsoft out of his home office in Portland, Oregon. Scott has three podcasts, including the Hanselminutes podcast, is an international speaker, hosts the Azure Friday show, has an incredible YouTube channel, and he's written a number of books and spoken in person to almost a half a million developers worldwide, which is probably more by now. Thanks for being on this show Scott.

Scott:

Hey, how are you, sir?

Barry:

Yeah, I'm doing all right. Still COVID, Corona time here. So as we are nearing Christmas time here in the Netherlands as well, we are locking down a bit more because it's starting to get cold, people are inside, so we have more infections, but compared to other countries we're doing okay I think, but still this time just sucks. This year sucks and I couldn't wait to get it over with.

Scott:

Yeah, well, yesterday was March and today is December, and all of this just needs to be done as soon as possible.

Barry:

Yeah. And then hopefully time will return to normal in 2021. We'll all have a vaccine and puppies and rainbows and unicorns, who knows.

Scott:

Let's just make it so I can go out and have dinner and that [crosstalk 00:02:13] is healthy and safe, and then I can go to the movies, first I think when I'm in a movie, than a movie theater, then I'll feel normal. So talk to me in a year.

Barry:

Yeah, I hope so. All right. So today I want to talk to you about learning and teaching because you do so many things, like I just mentioned, when I introduce you, you teach on YouTube, you talk, you write books, you do lots and lots of stuff and people know you from the interwebs basically, where they see you on Twitter and everything, and most of those things involve some sort of teaching. So how did you first get into teaching?

Scott:

I think that the teachers that I had when I was younger, I think of my fifth and sixth grade teachers. So that would be age 11 and 12, were so enthusiastic. They were so excited about teaching that you just couldn't help to be excited yourself. And when you have someone who is so enthusiastic about a topic, it's easy to become enthusiastic on your own. So I think of a teacher as being a professional enthusiast. And if you have a topic and you're like, oh, have you heard Barry, did you know this thing is so cool, let me show you, hang on, let me let share my screen, that's a teacher. So a teachers is just someone that does that at scale.

Barry:

Okay, and then you got into it because you also thought at university, right?

Scott:

Well, so I would give talks and I did them, not with user groups, what were they called clubs, like school clubs.

Barry:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott:

So I can learn chess and then I'm like, oh, I should start a chess club at school. So sixth grade I started chess club. Now I'm not a teacher at this point, I'm a 12 year old, but starting a club is a way to share your enthusiasm. And if you don't have anyone who knows how to play chess, then you have to them chess, and the next thing you're a sixth grader teaching other sixth graders chess or whatever club you're in, whatever thing you're excited about. And then you keep doing that and then later on you discover user groups where we would sit around and play with a commod or 64 computer, and that was a teaching as well. And then you go and give a small topic discussion, or you talk for 20 minutes on a particular topic at a user group, and the next thing you know you're teaching at a university course. Teach for an hour, and then next thing you know you're teaching for an hour a week, and then the next thing you know you're teaching three classes a term or something like that.

Barry:

Yeah. But teaching is very cool because like you say, you can share your knowledge, but then at scale, which I think is very valuable and works very well nowadays with the internet, of course. But let's go back to when you then would present at user groups and do a talk, let's say, where did you even learn how to do that, learn how to get on stage and actually present something. Because I remember when I started doing it, I didn't know what I was doing, I was just winging it. Was is the same for you?

Scott:

When I was 13 or 14, maybe 15, freshman year, freshman year is our first year of high school. So this is like four years before graduation, I did plays and then I would do talent shows and standup comedy, and then we had an acapella group, so then singing without a backing band. There's not much different from doing a play than there is doing a one man show or one woman show with PowerPoint behind you. It's a pretty easy jump. And again, if you're on stage giving a talk at a conference versus you are putting together hours of content every week because you're a teacher, the only difference is the one stage is elevated. I think teachers basically are putting on a conference every week.

Barry:

Right. Yeah, and then that just requires a lot more preparation.

Scott:

Sometimes the teacher knows the topic so much that they could teach 10 weeks on the course. I'm sure you've had teachers that are invented a thing or they were so good at a thing, but I could probably sit down and do, and you could probably do the same, you could do a 40 hour class on Azure with maybe a couple hours prep. You could just, [crosstalk 00:06:58] if someone called you and said quick Barry do a workshop, I need nine to five for five days. You'd be like, ah, give me a half day to prepare and then you'd be all set. I could do that on .NET, on Azure, on ASP.NET. So I'm sure that my biology teacher from school could easily do 40 hours of biology, which spread out over a semester or a term can be nine weeks or whatever. But then other teachers are learning topics where they're just one chapter ahead of you in the book, being a teacher doesn't mean being an expert. It sometimes just means being able to break things down and come up with a better analogy than you can quicker.

Barry:

Yeah, [crosstalk 00:07:38] so being able to explain, let's say complex topics in an understandable manner.

Scott:

Yeah, honestly my whole thing is analogy. If there's one thing I can do well in the last 30 years is, oh, so it's like, da, da, da, da, and like, oh yeah. Coming up with analogies at speed is the only skill that I have.

Barry:

Yeah. Well, it works well, I heard a lot on your podcast as well, where you then say it back what the person spoke about.

Scott:

Isn't that awful? I've done so many.

Barry:

It's okay.

Scott:

I've done so many episodes, I'm like, oh my goodness, that's all I do now is listen to people and go, so what I'm hearing you say Barry, is that the Azures is like a raccoon and you're like, where is he going with this, it makes no sense at all.

Barry:

Yeah. No, but it works well, and it helps people also to see the topic from a different angle, which helps them to learn better, at least I find that. So that is then part of your teaching style, having analogies. What other things are part of your teaching style, because I sometimes see you being very enthusiastic and let's say on on stage and sometimes I see you being a bit more quiet, let's say on YouTube?

Scott:

Well, so there's a couple, that's a great thing that you've noticed. So there's two things to consider there. There's the medium, and then there's the audience. You think about an interview with Tom cruise is different than Tom cruise on screen, is different than Tom cruise jumping out of an airplane. I'm not saying I'm Tom cruise, I'm just pointing out that context and medium are different.

Barry:

You're creating an analogy again.

Scott:

Yeah, I see, funny I do that. So I'm still Scott, I'm not playing a role, I'm not faking anything, but when the kids are asleep on a Friday night and I'm up at midnight in a dark room, trying to be welcoming to new people in tech, that's not the time to be on like you use the word on where it's like, Hey, welcome everybody. We're going to talk to you about computer stuff they didn't teach you, that's not going to make someone welcoming, and that's not right time. But if you're at a festival, no, and I don't know, in Holland and it's like, yes, it's .NET Fest and we're on stage and everyone's excited, there's balloons then you're on. So being able to do that though intentionally is very different than just having it happen. Some people just let that happen and they don't know why, other people intentionally say, all right, what's the medium, what's the goal, who's the audience. So I think of myself in that context as a character actor. I just put on a different pair of pants where that pants are very quiet or they're very loud.

Barry:

Oh, right. And then your previous experience obviously helps with that where you also acted on stage? That's basically similar. Yeah.

Scott:

Yeah, and again, it's not act, there's acting where you're literally trying to be someone that you're not, but talking quietly to your kids and teaching them something is different than leading a birthday party. And each of those things has value, but I've been blessed to do things on many different mediums, YouTube, onstage, in books, on a podcast. The fact that you can't see me means that right now, I can't really just stick late with my hands jump up and down because it's not going to help move the podcast forward. No, but I can change the way that I speak, I can change the meter of my speech, I can try not to say hm a lot. I can move around on the microphone to try to affect this medium, if it helps move the message forward. So being a teacher is being a teacher in context.

Barry:

Right. Yeah, and by the way, I can just hear your hands moving almost so I can feel it [crosstalk 00:11:47]

Scott:

That's simulated. I can feel the hands moving.

Barry:

It's true. So when you're then on stage, you're there to deliver a message basically, right? Let's say you're doing a keynote or something, which is an hour long presentation of something, you're trying to convey a couple of points. How do you construct a story like that?

Scott:

Well, so you said I'm trying to convey a couple of points. I think that's fair. There's "messaging" that [crosstalk 00:12:15]

Barry:

That's my assumption. Yeah.

Scott:

But I think I'm actually trying to conv, we call it the CTA or the call to action. I personally don't think about the message, I think about the feeling. So I'll literally sit down with someone before a podcast and I'll say, how do you want people to feel after this, should they feel overwhelmed, let's say we were going to do a podcast on Kubernetes.

Barry:

Yeah.

Scott:

We could decide intentionally and deliberate practices is so important. We could decide intentionally, we want this person to feel overwhelmed. We're trying to make them afraid of Kubernetes. That could be a goal. And then we could say, well, after we've beaten them over the head with Kubernetes, then we pick them up and we say, it's okay, I know it's a lot. Let's make them feel good, let's make them feel empowered, let's make them feel like, Hey, I can do this, maybe it's not as scary as I thought. Usually I want people to feel empowered. I want very much people to feel I can do this where this is whatever the topic of the podcast is.

Barry:

Yeah. Ah, Right.

Scott:

And then I work backwards from that feeling, like when you put on a play, what do you want them to feel. Do you want them to feel depressed, do you want them to think, do you want them to have, what's the conversation that you want people to have in the car as they leave the play. Now, when you put on a podcast, we have this thing we call driveway moments. Again, this is a bit of an American context, but imagine you're driving to work and then you're driving home, the podcast is so good that you sit in the driveway and you let it finish before you get out of the car.

Barry:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott:

That's when you know you're doing a good show. So making as many driveway moments as possible, it's also a goal of a podcast.

Barry:

Yeah. Okay, so you work your way back from the feeling of a session or a talk or whatever thing that you are creating.

Scott:

Yeah. So here's an example, we're doing a podcast, you invited me on your lovely show and I thank you for that. What do you want people to feel at the end of this show?

Barry:

Yeah, I want them to feel inspired to go out there and to teach, because at the end we'll have a little CTA, like you say, a call to action where folks can learn more about teaching and such and hopefully then they feel inspired to share what they know. That's what I want to convey.

Scott:

awesome. Then let's do it. We'll do it together.

Barry:

All right. So I think your particular style of teaching is very attractive to many people. We've seen that in how people follow you on Twitter, on YouTube, or all the mediums. What do you think makes your particular style so successful?

Scott:

I was watching a show recently. And what was the name of the guy? He was in Spiderman and he played, oh, shoot.

Barry:

Toby something [crosstalk 00:15:24].

Scott:

No, not Toby McGuire. He played the newspaper guy. You may have to do the [crosstalk 00:15:32]

Barry:

Say, Google Bing [crosstalk 00:15:33]

Scott:

Pause, edit this for a second. Give me one second, I'll look this guy up because it's important. JK Simmons.

Barry:

Okay.

Scott:

JK, and you'll see his face. He's an American actor, but you'll know immediately. And you're going to go, oh, it's that guy, because he's a character actor. There's not a lot of movies where he's the star, but there's a lot of movies where he made it better and he plays, and he's been commissioner Gordon in superhero. He's not a superhero, but he's always there also. So in Batman he was commissioner Gordon, and in Spiderman He was Jay Jonah Jameson. And you have to ask yourself, like, why is this guy successful, and I think it's two reasons. He's quietly good at his job, and he's been around forever. So like longevity, you're like, oh, you're that guy from that thing. That's me.

Barry:

Yeah.

Scott:

I think I'm decent at my job. I don't think I'm like the best, but I'm quietly consistent for 30 years.

Barry:

Right. Yeah. You've always showed up on your blog and on your podcast for instance, every week.

Scott:

I like that you said, I like that you said that. Showing up, whether it be for community like tonight, I have a user group in my local Portland area, user group for .NET in this case, simply being present for a long period of time is the way that it's like, oh, how did that person become famous, like where'd Brad Pitt come from. Well, he was always there quietly turning the crank for many, many years until he just was always there. Like Tom Hanks another example, I know I'm using American actors, but it's like [crosstalk 00:17:17]

Barry:

We all know them.

Scott:

Consistently kicking butt for years is what I'm trying to do.

Barry:

Yeah, yeah. And you're doing a great job at it, but still, there is, I think your style is still very good because even if you did show up and you were just very bad at it and it's [crosstalk 00:17:33] yeah, there are people that do that, that wouldn't work and that wouldn't translate in the success that you have with teaching people. So maybe from my perspective, something that you do very well is what I would like to call an infotainment. So listening to you explain something is not only informative, but also very entertaining.

Scott:

Yeah, [crosstalk 00:17:57] I actually, yeah. I've actually said edutaining, very similar word, because you're basically entertaining and then providing information or educating. So you're definitely, as we say in America, you're picking up what I'm putting down. So you got what I was going for. It doesn't have to be boring.

Barry:

And then do you incorporate humor on purpose in your talks or do you just come up with that stuff from the fly [crosstalk 00:18:26] ?

Scott:

It depends, I wouldn't say my YouTubes aren't super funny, my podcasts aren't funny. But if you are paying money to sit in a room for a conference somewhere and someone spent the money to fly you somewhere. Yeah, I think when I go to a play and I sit down or I go to a standup comic and I sit down, I want to laugh. So I've always associate the theater with humor. So the theater is where my humor comes out the most, and I think humor makes the education go down better.

Barry:

No, definitely. Yeah, because then it's a bit more lighthearted then people are more receptive to receive whatever it is that you have to tell them.

Scott:

Exactly.

Barry:

Okay. So with all that then, what do you like best about teaching? What is the moment within a session or within anything that you see from the audience or something else or that you get reactions, what is the best part of teaching that you love?

Scott:

So even if there's 100 in the room or 1000, I will start walking around on the stage, I'll look left and right, and I will pick two people. One off to each side, one off to the left, one off to the right. And I will focus on those people and then I will look at them and I'll pick a person who I think is like nodding along or at least appreciating what I'm doing. And if they're nodding, I'm like, oh, that person gets what I'm saying, they're also picking up what I'm putting down, so I'm going to look at that person. Now they don't feel like I'm actually staring at them, but the people to the left will see me and go, oh, he's looking towards the left, he's looking to us.

People around them all feel like they're involved, and it's a very engaging way of heart beating back and forth as you look left and you look right. And I pick one person, but then the entire left side and the entire right side think that I'm looking at them. And then I can ignore the other 900 people, and then just focus on the two people that dig what I'm doing.

Barry:

Right. That makes it also a little bit less, maybe overwhelming for yourself.

Scott:

Oh yeah. I don't want to talk to a thousand people. It's way easier to just sit with one or two. Then a talk becomes tutoring.

Barry:

Yeah, exactly. So is that then the best part of teaching that you get to interact with those specific people or with the audience?

Scott:

It's the moment when somebody's like, oh, you get when they click and you like that person just got it. You might talk to them for 10, 15, 20 minutes and you're like, oh man, nobody is getting what I'm saying here, but you get that first laugh and then you get that first moment where it's like, oh, okay, hang on, I lost the other 900 people, but these two got it, now I'm okay. That's that's enough. [crosstalk 00:21:31] I don't want to take everyone with me, but it's yeah.

Barry:

It doesn't always work, and that's the magical part. Yeah, I totally agree.

Scott:

Definitely.

Barry:

And then have you ever bombed when the folks do stand up comedy, you bomb when the room is just not laughing and maybe even booing at you, have you ever had that?

Scott:

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's whether a joke might not land or sometimes a bombing for me will be where something didn't work culturally. A joke or an analogy might not work in Malaysia as it does in Holland as it does in Russia.

Barry:

Yeah. Yeah.

Scott:

So that's the thing back when we traveled and I was putting a huge amount of effort into keynotes and stuff, I would, and I think you and I may have talked about this in some European country at some point. I will go there a day early and I will find a local and I'll run the whole talk by that local, in including analogies. Right now we didn't prep any of this, so I'm using names like Tom Hanks or whatevert. But I would find out who's the Tom Hanks of the Netherlands, or who's the Conan O'Brien of Malaysia, and then I would swap out the analogies for local politicians or a local comedians.

And in doing that, it localize the talk again, not linguistically localizing, but culturally localizing. That is a technique that I've been doing now for almost 13 years, and it is very, very helpful. People don't even realize that the difference between a good talk is okay, that was a good talk, and a talk that has just the right amount of like, oh, wow, you actually hung out here in the Dominican Republic for two days, and thought about who we are as a people and inserted memes that were specific to us, is another way to connect with people.

Barry:

Right. Yeah, because that's all about being relatable, isn't it? Because when people then get the feeling that you understand who they are, then they can relate to you as well, and you're just one of them, you're also a developer. You understand who they are, so they understand who you are and therefore you can have that magical moment of teaching.

Scott:

Yep. Yep. And I think being relatable is one way to put it, another way to think about it though, is the idea that you are not swooping in from whatever country or place that you're coming from and declaring I'm here with the knowledge and I'm bringing the knowledge to you. Like you're saying like, Hey, I'm just a person, and I'm just the one on this side of the stage today, it very well could be you tomorrow. You don't ever want to hold court in my opinion, I don't think that's a healthy relationship.

Barry:

Yeah, and that goes back to what you said earlier about being a professionally enthusiastic person, instead of, let's say a teacher that might come across arrogant or condescending.

Scott:

Right. Exactly. Condescending or gate keeping or any of those things that make you feel like I'm not supposed to be here. The number one thing a teacher or a presenter should do is make you feel like you're supposed to be here. You should never feel like you've been othered or made to feel like, oh yeah, why are you here, that is the worst.

Barry:

Yeah, that's definitely the worst. And those are also [crosstalk 00:25:10] certain people, once they know that they will obviously avoid that talk and or that presenter or teacher, so yeah, you do that very well. And then you said also something about learning or some teachers are obviously not experts in what they teach per se, when I'm creating a Pluralsight course, I'm not always an expert in the topic. For instance, a couple of months ago, I was asked to create a Pluralsight course about quantum computing. Ultimately it felt true, but I was just doing lots and lots of research about it because I'm not a quantum computing researcher, not by far, what I can do is research the topic and then condense all of that information so that I can create beautiful slides and then actually convey that and teach that to people. What is your process for learning new stuff?

Scott:

So the term I usually use is synthesize. I may not be an expert in quantum computing, but given a day I could put together a 15 minute overview for an audience. If I was a technical advisor, Satya or somebody wanted to know something, I could probably go and do enough research, just like an analyst, maybe a general expert in a space, but not a specialized expert in a space. You're asking, how do I synthesize that, how do I put that together?

Barry:

Yeah. What's your process for learning new things?

Scott:

I actually did a Pluralsight course for free. All of my Pluralsight courses are free, I don't get any money on them, and you can see it. I think at the website, it's still up called speaking hacks.com. And in that talk, Rob Connery gives me a topic that I am not familiar with, and I'm like, he watches me in real time, learn the topic and then give a talk on the topic. I think the topic was coffee script. And it's hard, you're sitting down and you're trying to figure out is this thing like anything I've ever seen before, what are the appropriate analogies, how is this thing fit into my existing workflow. Basically, whenever you're saying anything, when you're teaching a topic, after every single sentence, a reasonable reaction from the audience is, so what.

Think about that. If you answer, so what after every single thing you say, then that'll be a good next sentence. So it's like, Hey everyone, it's Azure Barry, I'm going to talk about the cloud. So what. Well, the cloud is super interesting, right, the cloud is actually someone else's computer. So what, well, someone else's computer means it's not yours. So what, and then that so what is moving you forward. So if I can answer so what, with any of my sentences, then I'm definitely pushing the ball forward.

Barry:

Yeah. Ah, okay. So that is a great way to then learn and create, let's say teaching material or content to teach from something [crosstalk 00:28:20] learning.

Scott:

Yeah, because if the, like, God, of course, that would be a horrible audience, if the audience was watching you talk and they were like, Barry, so what, [crosstalk 00:28:28]

Barry:

They might be thinking it.

Scott:

Well, exactly. They are thinking it. So just make sure your next sentence answers the implied so what.

Barry:

Oh right. That's great.

Scott:

Have you ever heard of yes and, the concept of yes?

Barry:

Yeah, and obviously you did that when you were on stage, I guess.

Scott:

Exactly. Yeah. Yes and is a great way to, to move the ball forward when doing improvisation. So, so what is the yes and style for moving conversation forward when you're doing teaching.

Barry:

Okay, that's actually a very great Pluralsight course. I've seen that as well.

Scott:

Thanks.

Barry:

And I think it's a must see for people that want to teach or want to be on stage, or it's also just very entertaining to watch. And like you said, it's free and I'll link to it in the show notes of course. So as we are coming to the end of this episode, like I said, I want to give the listeners a call to action and a bit of inspiration. Let's say that I'm listening to this podcast and I'm already presenting sometimes in a use group, or maybe I'm thinking about it and I want to get started, but I'm not sure how to get started with actually teaching people, how to develop my own style, what to do with that. What would be your top tip for people that are thinking about teaching or starting teaching? What should they do?

Scott:

There are things you can do, like find out where, there's a thing called Toastmasters, which I think is a global. Yeah, like I want to learn to speak type of a place. The thing that I think the better answer is, is be intentional, go and search for deliberate practice. People think that the Scotts and the Barry and the whoevers go out there and they just start talking and everything works out great. And then if it doesn't work out well for you, then all, I must not have that special something, I don't have that talent, I don't have that whatever. When in fact there is a focused, deliberate, conscious practice for presenting information correctly and appropriately at scale, and you can learn that by just doing it. I think a lot of people just aren't willing to actually do the work.

We had that comment at the very beginning about character actors and how, where did Tom Hanks come from or where did so and so come from. And it's like, they were always working. They were doing what's called grinding. Meaning they were somewhere in some bad movie sucking or whatever. I was presenting at user groups in 1994 very badly. I did not do well then, and that's cool. That's how, where you should start, do a user group talk, do a brown bag, present to 10 people over Zoom at your office and then literally get their feedback and then do it again and then do better and then do a user group and then do a code cam and then do a one in your country and then do one at a conference.

Barry:

Yeah, so just get started and learn.

Scott:

You got it.

Barry:

By doing it. Yeah. All right. That is great. And obviously also visit that Pluralsight course and get some speaking hacks there.

Scott:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Barry:

Okay. Well, thank you very much for talking to me and taking the time to tell me about teaching and learning today.

Scott:

Oh, thank you so much for having me on your show.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to All Hands on Tech. To see show notes and more info, visit pluralsight.com/podcast. To subscribe to the developer weekly podcast, visit developerweeklypodcast.com.