How to prepare a presentation for MoscowJS.
Table of Contents generated with DocToc
- Abstract
- Submission Requirements
- Submission Process
- Details about your Talk
- Preparation Process
- Checklist for slides
- Links
- After the Talk
- Code of Conduct
- Contacts
This repo contains guidelines on how to submit and prepare a talk for MoscowJS.
No previous public speaking experience is required to give a talk. We welcome everyone and will help you prepare your speech.
- Name of the talk
- Preferred ways to contact you
Here is an incomplete list of topics that we welcome at the meetup.
- Technical topics: programming languages, libraries, frameworks, platforms;
- Processes and communication: team organization, knowledge sharing;
- Non-standart applications of technology: experiments and reasoning;
- Online and offline communities: building and expanding thematic discussion groups.
This list is here only for reference. If you have an idea for a talk that does not relate to any of those, please don't hesitate to submit it.
The only limitation we have now is timing: presentation should not take more than 15 minutes + 5 minutes for questions from the audience.
Submit your proposal by email to [email protected] or this online form.
Also you can create PR to MoscowsJS repository.
How to make PR:
- Fork MoscowsJS repository.
- Upload a photo of yourself to speakers photos folder and name it with your nickname.
- Create or use existing moscowjs-*.md file with other proposals in events folder.
- Write title and description of your talk, attach your upladed photo and your contacts. See example.
- Make PR and wait.
Your submission got accepted, congratulations! You can start preparing the presentation. In the meantime organizers will need additional information about the talk to share on social media and mailing lists.
Please send all the info to our email.
Please provide this information before given dates. It is important for us to inform everyone interested in the event when it's relevant.
Let's use NASA countdown scheme to mark important
milestones. Given that T is the date of the meetup:
Please send us:
-
T-21 days(3 weeks before)Information about you:
- Your Name
- Company Name (optional)
- Skype ID (for rehearsals)
- Phone number (as an emergency contact)
- Photo (for the web site)
- Public contacts, e.g. twitter, github, etc (for the web site)
Information about the talk:
- Talk description (for meetup announcement)
- Main points (for organizers to know what the talk will be about)
-
T-14 days(2 weeks before)2 dates, when it's comfortable for you to do skype calls/rehearsals. E.g.
12 May 19:00-22:00 15 May 21:00-23:00More on rehearsals here.
-
T-1 day(1 day before)Your slides, both original and
pdfversions.
We encourage you to be creative with your presentation. But that doesn't mean you have to improvise as you speak: in our experience it's always better to be prepared.
You'll find links about every aspect of preparing a talk below. As well as our check list for slides.
One of the ways to improve quality of your presentation is to do rehearsals. You can do them by yourself, out loud, or ask a collegue to listen to you and give feedback.
Each of our talks goes through 3 rehearsal sessions with organizers and previous speakers. Two of them by skype, one live at the venue the day before meetup.
You'll receive feedback from people with experience both doing technical presentations and coaching people who are preparing one.
This may seem like an overkill, but believe me, your presentation will be more valuable, clear and concise after these rehearsals. You will be less nervous on stage and prepared in case anything goes wrong. Listeners will be thankful and you'll have something to be proud of. (Did I mention that every talk is recoreded and published online after the event?)
Please make sure your slides comply these requirements:
- Title slide
- Has the name of the talk
- Has your name and any public contact info (email, twitter, etc)
- Every slide except for the title slide has its number on it
- Code on slides
- Is short
- Is not a bitmapped image
- Has a light background
- Has syntax highlight
- Is typed with monospaced font
- Slides do not have content that violates Code of Conduct
- Final slide
- Has your name and public contact info (email, twitter, etc)
- Has a single short readable link (e.g.
bit.ly/mytalk) to a place with all the repos/articles/slides/demos used in the presentation.
These resources will help you prepare an awesome presentation.
- speaking.io – collection of advices about public speaking;
- "Public Speaking" course on coursera.org;
- Article "You should give talks. They will be awesome. Here's why!" by Julia Evans;
- Article "How To Give the Killer Tech Talk — A Pamphlet" by Jan Lehnardt;
- Article in Russian "Как подготовиться к докладу на техническую тему" by Andrey Salomatin.
We want you to get the most out of your experience speaking at MoscowJS. This section is about what happens after the meetup and how it can help you improve yourself as a speaker and keep in touch with other speakers and organizers.
Feedback is an important step of the process. It can help you uderstand your strengths and weaknesses, choose a direction in which you'd like to grow as a speaker.
We usually ask attendees to rate the meetup and every talk after the event. You as a speaker will have access to this feedback.
Another great source of feedback are your mentors. If you had rehearsals before the meetup, feel free to reach out to your mentors and ask for their general opinion about how you did.
I hope you've enjoyed working on your presentation and speaking at MoscowJS. If you have, and would like to contribute in return, this is how you can help us make MoscowJS better.
-
Take one speaker of the future meetup and help them prepare their presentation. Join their rehearsals and share what you've learned. This is also a good way to learn more about the speaker's subject and public speaking in general.
-
Participate in discussions in the Speakers Mailing List. Share your thoughts on how to improve MoscowJS.
-
Enjoy going to our events without registering in advance. From that moment on you will always be on the list ;)
MoscowJS welcomes everyone, and defends you from harassment. For details on what kinds of behaviour are not tolerated and consequences for violating these rules, we refer to Code of Conduct.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask us by email or in form of a github issue.