DCBPW 2015

When: Sat-Sun, April 11-12, 2015

Location: Silver Spring, MD

Stay: Hotel/Travel Info

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Presentations

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks

By R Geoffrey Avery (‎rGeoffrey‎) from Philadelphia.pm
Date: Saturday, 11 April 2015 16:30
Duration: 30 minutes
Target audience: Any
Language:

You can find more information on the speaker's site:

• Talk: http://dcbpw.org/dcbpw2015/newtalk

Schedule (not yet in order)

John Karr - ‎Form::Diva‎


These Lig­htn­ing Talks may be seri­ous, funny, or both. They may be given by ex­perien­ced speak­ers al­ready giv­ing full length talks or by first time speak­ers just start­ing out (this is a great way to get star­ted if you have some­th­ing to say). If you are a first time speak­er you will win a tie with an ex­peri­ence speak­er when the schedule is made if it comes to it. Today's first time speak­er could give tomor­row's keynote.

We will have about 5 Lig­htn­ing Talks of 5 minutes. Sub­mit your talk through the sub­mit talk link on this web­site. The first de­ad­line is with the full length talks. The second de­ad­line is one week be­fore the con­fer­ence starts and many pro­pos­als will be ac­cepted. At least one speak­ing spot will be held open until the morning of the talks to give you a chan­ce to see some­th­ing at the con­fer­ence and put togeth­er a Lig­htn­ing Talk re­spon­se. Howev­er if you wait for the later de­ad­lines note that there are fewer spots avail­able and you are less li­ke­ly to be ac­cepted so please try to sub­mit more than a week be­fore the con­fer­ence.

In ad­di­tion to the five minute Lig­htn­ing Talks where you get to use your com­put­er, slides, and any other tool, we will also have some Lig­htn­ing Ad­vertise­ments. These are only 30 seconds, you don't have to sub­mit a pro­pos­al, you don't get any slides, and the only AV as­sis­tance of­fered is a micro­phone. If you have a BOF to an­noun­ce, an auc­tion item so ad­vert­ise or any other short mes­sage you can use the trans­i­tion time that would be ot­herw­ise was­ted bet­ween Lig­htn­ing Talks to share your mes­sage. Just show up be­fore we start and take a seat in the as­sig­ned seats in the front of the room.

Why Would You Want to do a Lig­htn­ing Talk? Maybe you've never given a talk be­fore, and you'd like to start small. For a Lig­htn­ing Talk, you don't need to make slides, and if you do de­cide to make slides, you only need to make three. Maybe you're nerv­ous and you're af­raid you'll mess up. It's a lot eas­i­er to plan and de­liv­er a five minute talk than it is to de­liv­er a long talk. And if you do mess up, at least the pain­ful part will be over quick­ly. Maybe you don't have much to say. Maybe you just want to ask a ques­tion, or in­vite peo­ple to help you with your pro­ject, or boast about some­th­ing you did, or tell a short cautiona­ry story. These th­ings are all in­terest­ing and worth talk­ing about, but there might not be en­ough to say about them to fill up thir­ty minutes. Maybe you have a lot of th­ings to say, and you're al­ready going to give a long talk on one of them, and you don't want to hog the spot­light. There's noth­ing wrong with giv­ing sever­al Lig­htn­ing Talks. Hey, they're only five minutes. On the other side, peo­ple might want to come to a lig­htn­ing talk when they would­n't come to a long talk on the same sub­ject. The risk for the at­tendees is small­er: If the talk turns out to be dull, or if the per­son giv­ing the talk turns out to be a rea­l­ly bad speak­er, well, at least it's over in five minutes. With lig­htn­ing talks, you're never stuck in some bor­ing lec­ture for forty-five minutes.

Still hav­ing troub­le pick­ing a topic, here are some sug­ges­tions:

1. Why my favorite module is X.
2. I want to do cool pro­ject X. Does an­yone want to help?
3. Suc­cess­ful Pro­ject: I did pro­ject X. It was a suc­cess. Here's how you could be­nefit.
4. Failed Pro­ject: I did pro­ject X. It was a failure, and here's why.
5. Heresy: Peo­ple al­ways say X, but they're wrong. Here's why.
6. You All Suck: Here's what is wrong with the our com­mun­ity. 7. Call to Ac­tion: Let's all do more of X / less of X.
8. Would­n't it be cool if X?
9. Some­one needs to do X.
10. Wish List
11. Why X was a mis­take.
12. Why X looks like a mis­take, but isn't.
13. What it's like to do X.
14. Here's a use­ful tech­nique that wor­ked.
15. Here's a tech­nique I thought would be use­ful but didn't work.
16. Why al­gorithm X sucks.
17. Com­parison of al­gorithms X and Y.

Of co­ur­se, you could give the talk on an­yth­ing you wan­ted, wheth­er or not it is on this list. If we get a full schedule of noth­ing but five minutes of rant­ing and rav­ing on each topic, a good time will still be had by most.