Lightning talks should provoke, enlighten, and stretch the imagination! They should get people connecting with each others’ ideas on Friday night, before we start working in the Open Space on Saturday morning.

IMS, one of our sponsors, has kindly offered one of their iLane devices as a prize! Each person that presents a talk will be included in adraw. After all presenters have dazzled us we will pick one of the presenters randomly.

What is a Lightning Talk?

Good question*.

Lightning Talks appear to have originated at Yet Another Perl Conference 2000, and have gradually spread to other technical conferences.
It’s an opportunity for you to talk for 1-3 minutes on the subject of your Position Papers or ANY topic you think participants will find interesting. That’s all! It’s very informal, low pressure (be sure not to try to cram in everything you know!) and fun. Emphasis on FUN!

Positioned before the OpenSpace portion of our program begins, it will help us discover each others’ ideas – perhaps even find potential collaborators and exciting new directions. We want you to go: “wow, she has an interesting/crazy/heretical/far out idea there! I must make sure to find her at lunchtime, or join her session!”

How does it work?

We assign 60 minutes. People voluntarily sign up in sequential order, and we run the 1 to 3 minute talks end-to-end for a most amazing avalanche of ideas!

In order to allow rapid changes between speakers we will not have a projector.

The timekeeper signals you to start, and starts his timer. If your slides are not ready when you are… the show goes on! You get another signal at two minutes, and again when your three minutes are up. You must then stop talking or risk being helpfully escorted off stage! :-)

Do I have to do a lightning talk?

No, it’s optional.

How do I sign up?

You can email declan (dwhelan AT dpwhelan DOT com) or comment on this sheet if you are really keen to present. We will add names on a first-come, first-served basis. If you prefer, you can get your name on the list when you register. We will go through the presenter list in order and if we have time we will open it up to people who did not sign up – in case someone has been inspired!

Will these be recorded?

Yes, with your permission. You will have 2 mikes, one for the PA system (if we need it)  and one for recording.

Will there be a projector?

Nope – this will be a “low-tech”.

What tools will be provided?

You will have a flip-chart and markers.

Help!

Here’s an article with tips from Martin Fowler for making a lightning talk. Just remember, ours are only 1 – 3 minutes, not 5!

What can you say in 1-3 minutes?

Here are some ideas, inspired by a Perl community page:

1. Why my favorite practice 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 what I learned.
5. Agile Heresy: People always say X, but they’re wrong. Here’s why.
6. You All Suck: Here’s what is wrong with the Agile community.
7. I need to find an X (a person, role, software, team, company…) can you help?
8. Call to Action: Let’s all do more of X / less of X.
9. A Funny Thing happened to me on the Way to Agile Coach Camp
10. Wouldn’t it be cool if X?
11. Someone needs to do X.
12. Coaching Wish List
13. Why X was a mistake.
14. Why X looks like a mistake, but isn’t.
15. What it’s like to do X.
16. Here’s a useful technique that worked.
17. Here’s a technique I thought would be useful but didn’t work.
18. Intersections: I noticed this cool thing, maybe we should investigate it.
19. Comparison of approaches X and Y.
20. We should be paying more attention to X.
21. I’ve never understood why we should do X.
22. Let me tell you a funny story.

More on this topic on the originator’s site.

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