Tips For Speakers
Timing
You’ll be told how long you get to stand at the front of the room.
This time usually isn’t how long your talk should be, but literally how much time you get at the front to “wow the crowd”. You can fill that time slot as you see fit (talk + questions, talk only, talk + interpretive dance intro/outro), but you will be stopped once the time is up (you’ll get a 5 minute warning if you want one).
Our normal pattern is either two speakers with 40 minute time slots or three speakers with 25 minute time slots, although one-off meetings might be different.
There might be time at the end of the meeting for all the speakers to answer questions about their talks. This depends on everyone under-running so don’t rely on it. If you expect questions factor that in to your talk and plan to leave time at the end of your time slot for them.
Slides
You can put whatever you want in your slides (or not have any if you’re doing a live demo). However if you are showing something on screen there are some things you should be aware of.
You should favour a high contrast colour scheme, and dark text on a light background works best with the projector which can be a little lacklustre in handling colours.
Make sure you don’t try to put too much on one slide (code especially) - people at the back of the room won’t be able to read it. Similarly, put the font size really big in your terminal or editor if you are doing a live demo or showing code.
Infrastructure
If you need any special hardware for your talk make sure you bring it with you. Someone else might have what you need, but don’t rely on it.
The projector takes VGA input, make sure you have an adaptor for connecting it to your laptop. The other speakers might not have the same laptop as you and so their adaptor might not fit your laptop.
Don’t rely on WIFI for your talk. There might be WIFI in the venue, there might not. There might be WIFI but you can’t get on it ‘cos everyone else is following an Apple Keynote. If you really need internet connectivity bring a 3G dongle or something.
And Finally…
Remember it’s a technical crowd, so don’t shy away from getting deep into stuff. It can sometimes help to focus hard on one thing and skim / ignore other aspects. You’ve only got a short period of time and you’ll never be able to cover everthing in your chosen topic so don’t try!
Don’t stress out about it. LRUG are a friendly crowd, we want to hear about Ruby stuff and are grateful for anyone who gets up there to talk. If you want to practice or get feedback on your talk (before or after the meeting) just ask on the mailing list (or Twitter) and people will help out.
Meeting Calendar