Writing talk abstracts and outlines, newer speakers forget all the time that a talk is COMMUNICATION, and has an audience. You're speaking TO someone, and you should have an idea who that someone is before you write the talk, let alone deliver it.

If you don't know who your audience is, it's going to be a bad talk no matter how cool your tech is.

This (sadly) doesn't apply to academic conferences, where your audience is the paper review committee.

#SpeakerTips

Folks, can we please STOP posting "naked QR codes" with no accompanying URL/hyperlink? Not everyone is looking at your talk via a phone.

It's also fairly hostile to the visually impaired.

#kubecon #speakertips

Some Do Nots for #Keynotes at #kubecon

1. No architecture diagrams with more than 5 objects. Ideally, no arch diagrams at all.

2. Slides shouldn't have more than 40 words of text.

3. Don't try to explain all of your project's features in a 5 minute keynote. Pick one, and show it off.

#speakertips

Hey, if you're submitting a talk to #Kubecon, you don't need "Kubernetes" in the title. It's assumed.

#speakertips

"Phrase : Phrase" talk titles are almost always bad.

Usually, you end up with those because you couldn't figure out a good title (it's hard!) and decided to glue together a couple of clever-sounding phrases with a colon. It doesn't actually work, and hurts your acceptance chances/attendance.

Generally speaking, if you find yourself putting a colon into your draft talk title, rewrite it.

#speakertips @kubecon

Hey, would-be speakers:

Other OSS events aren't Rejekts. You can't just copy and paste your not-accepted Kubecon proposal onto another event's CfP and expect it to do well. In fact, if you do this more than once program committees become predisposed to reject anything from you.

You need to look at what the event actually wants and only submit proposals that are appropriate to that event.

#speakertips #kubecon

CfP reminder: there is nothing immoral about using ChatGPT (or other LLM) for your talk proposal drafting. But please be aware that it generally does a pretty bad job, and it has no knowledge that you don't give it in your prompt.

#SpeakerTips #cfp

Today's the day! 🤩 🎉

Join us for an engaging workshop sharing top tips on how to craft a session submission for #midcamp2024 and other #drupal events.

It's not too late to sign up, register at: https://www.meetup.com/drupalchicago/events/297837871/

All welcome!

#speakertips

Reminder that if you are submitting a talk proposal to an #OpenSource #Community conference, then your abstract MUST spell out which technologies/projects your talk will cover.

If you don't tell us, we're going to assume that your talk is a stealth product pitch.

#SpeakerTips #ProgramCommitteeLife

Hey, speakers! If your talk proposal doesn't say which open source tools you're covering, and your blog is full of proprietary software coverage, I'm going to assume that you're trying to sneak a proprietary SW talk into an OSS conference and reject it.

#SpeakerTips