The fear of not knowing enough
Geertjan Wielenga: Let's shift this slightly to public speaking, where the situation is similar: people tend to think they need to know everything about a particular topic before they can go and speak about it. What is your advice on that?
Venkat Subramaniam: I think that there is another flaw: people think that they need to tell everything as well as know everything. That is the quality of a really poor talk, in my opinion.
One night I saw an email come through saying, "Dammit! I'm still here in the middle of the night, working on the example you gave because this is so intriguing. I've gone on to dig so much deeper and I've gone so much further into this topic. I'm just writing to let you know that you inspired me to learn." Sometimes, you just need to light that fire in someone's mind. You don't need to know everything and you don't need to convey everything.
When I go to conferences and speak, someone...