A guide to prepare for speaking at events

General guidelines

1. No hiring or product pitches. The talk should share knowledge, not advertise your company or your product. If you want to make a product or hiring pitch, opt for a sponsored session or a kiosk at the meet-up/conference.
2. Disclosure: If the work was done outside your current organization, mention it clearly at the start of the presentation.
   Example: “This project was developed independently, outside my work at my organization.”
3. Company logos are acceptable. You can include your employer or project logo on slides.
4. Adhere to the Code of Conduct.

• Language: Be professional and respectful.
• Imagery: Use inclusive and appropriate visuals. Avoid stereotypes or offensive humor.

🏢 On the day of the meet-up/conference

1. Present from your own laptop. No spare laptops will be provided.

2. Sign the Video Release form. All talks are recorded and live-streamed. The hall manager will ask you to sign a video release form at the venue.

3. Bring an HDMI adapter or cable (especially if not using a Mac).

4. Clickers will not be provided - bring your own if needed.

5. Pre-checks:

• Be at the venue 30 mins before your presentation to test your laptop and slides with the venue’s AV set-up.
• Keep your laptop charged and notifications turned off.
• Absolutely no live demos or live coding during the meet-up or conference. If your demo fails, you’ll end up debugging your code instead of presenting. This distracts the flow of your presentation and leads to a poor quality talk.
• Always prepare a recorded version of your demo on your laptop.
• Keep a local copy of your demos, videos, and slides. Do not depend on venue WiFi or internet-based demos.
• Save files on your laptop or a USB drive so your talk runs seamlessly offline.

Dos and donts for video recording your presentation

1. Briefly introduce yourself at the start of the presentation, in not more than 30 seconds.
2. Avoid using words like “so”, “basically”, “you know”. This impacts the recording of your talk, leading to more edits of these phrases.
3. Explain the agenda of the talk. Or start with an anecdote/story, and then introduce the agenda/flow of the talk.
4. Jump into the problem statement quickly so that your audiences are attentive. If you take too much time to get to the problem statement, viewers will lose attention.
5. Show architecture diagrams and code samples to make your case during your talk. Visuals help to keep the audience’s attention.
6. When concluding your talk, repeat the key insights or main points of your talk.
7. Have a concluding slide with your contact details. Tell audiences how they can contact you.
8. Add references and links for audiences to look up after the talk.
9. Where you have referred to someone else’s work, attribute by adding a citation or a mention in the references.

Preparation tips

Review The Fifth Elephant editor Sandeep Joshi’s Dev to Dev presentation for guidance on how to prepare your slides - https://images.hasgeek.com/embed/file/29d3f93818c74c9885eb223986516c5e