---
aliases: ["Speak at Codemotion Milan"]
Is A: Project
Belongs to: "[[24q3]]"
Advances: "[[responsibility-content-production]]"
Status: Done
Owner: "[[person-luca-rossi]]"
---
# Speak at Codemotion Milan

## Overview

Codemotion Milan 2024 invited [[person-luca-rossi]] to deliver a 30-minute talk on growing a newsletter business as a technical founder. The talk, titled "From Side Project to 50K Subscribers: Building a Content Business in Public," covered the Refactoring growth story, key inflection points, and practical lessons for engineers considering content as a career path or side business.

This was the first major conference speaking engagement and represented an important step in building personal brand credibility beyond the newsletter audience. Conference talks drive a different kind of trust than written content — they put a face and voice to the brand, which strengthens both subscriber acquisition and sponsor confidence. The talk was well-received and led to several valuable connections, including two future podcast guests.

## Goals

- Write and rehearse a 30-minute talk with slides
- Target key themes: newsletter economics, audience building, and the engineering-to-content pipeline
- Deliver the talk at Codemotion Milan in October 2024
- Record the talk for repurposing as a YouTube video and newsletter content
- Generate at least 200 new newsletter subscribers from the event

## Key decisions

- **Story-driven structure, not a how-to.** Rather than a generic "10 tips for growing a newsletter" format, structured the talk as a chronological narrative of the Refactoring journey. Stories are more memorable and more authentic than advice lists.
- **Include real numbers.** Shared actual subscriber counts, revenue milestones, and open rates. Transparency is a core Refactoring value and it differentiates the talk from vague "I grew my audience" presentations. This decision was slightly uncomfortable but generated the most positive feedback.
- **No live demo.** Considered showing the newsletter creation process live but decided the risk of technical issues on stage was not worth it. Used screenshots and short video clips instead.

## Notes

- Preparation took about 3 weeks of part-time work — mostly slide design and rehearsal. Rehearsed the full talk 5 times, including twice in front of [[person-sara-ricci]] and [[person-matteo-cellini]] who gave tough but useful feedback on pacing and clarity.
- The audience was about 300 people, skewing toward mid-career developers and engineering managers. Q&A was lively — the most common question was about time management (how to write a weekly newsletter while also doing other work). This became a topic for a future newsletter issue.
- Post-talk networking led to meeting [[person-emma-wilson]] and [[person-david-kim]], both of whom later appeared as podcast guests in [[24q3-podcast-season-2]] and [[25q2-podcast-season-3]] respectively.
- The talk recording was published on YouTube and performed modestly (~2,500 views in 3 months), but the subscriber spike from the event itself was about 180 — slightly below the 200 target but still a strong result for a single event. The real value was in credibility and relationship building, not direct conversion.
