This blog posting is part of a series about organizing Meetups. While mostly centered around PostgreSQL Meetups, large parts can be adapted by other Meetups as well. All postings in this series:
- Checklist for Meetup Attendees
- Checklist for Meetup Speakers (this posting)
- Checklist for Meetup Organizers
- Overview posting
You are speaking at a Meetup. Congratulations!
General advice
- Check your slides for a good contrast, and fonts large enough. Use an online contrast checker.
- Use fonts which are easy to read. The Braille Institute created readable fonts.
- Use a fixed-width font for code examples.
- If you present for the first time, do a dry run. Use a clock to measure if you stay on time and do not overrun.
- Consider recording yourself, and watch the recording afterwards. This helps you to place yourself into the position of your audience.
- Use tools like Slido or Mentimeter to engage with the audience.
- Ask the audience engaging questions during the Meetup (note that in online Meetups the attendees are usually muted)
- Post about your presentation on Social Media, both before the Meetup to encourage more people to signup, and after the Meetup with information about your slides. Ask for feedback.
- If you have related blog postions, or are working on that, include the links or a preview in your slides.
Speaking at an in-person Meetup
Here are things you can do to make this a smooth process.
- Show up early, and test your laptop with the projector at the venue.
- Bring your presentation on a USB stick. Laptops may fail, connections might not work. It is helpful if someone else can provide a laptop and your presentation can be easily copied.
- On that note: also export a PDF version of your presentation.
- Make sure that your presentation has no Digital Rights Management (DRM) elements in it, which will block sharing or exporting the presentation. Corporate presentation decks are prone to be „copyright protected” and often do not need to be.
- Verify with the Meetup host that the video output of your laptop will work with the available system at the Meetup venue. These days HDMI is common, but not everyone is using this type of connector.
- Verify if the Meetup venue requires any software installations on your laptop. This is not common, but sometimes it is the case. Digital sharing solutions (instead of HDMI connectors) will require you to dial into a „digital meeting room” and share your presentation.
- Verify with the Meetup host if you need a stable internet connection for a live demo.
- If you plan a live demo, record it before the Meetup and if everything else fails, you show the video.
- Provide contact details on your slides, in case attendees have questions.
- Attendees appreciate having the slides. Consider uploading and providing your talk slides. The Meetup host can help you distribute the link to attendees.
- You can upload the slides before the Meetup, and provide a link and/or QR-Code in your presentation.
- It is ok to mention your company or employer on your slides, and if you are hiring. Provide a link to the hiring website, ideally a QR-Code.
Speaking at an online Meetup
Online Meetups are different from in-person Meetups. First of all, you need to bring your own beverage. There’s also not much opportunity to chat with attendees, especially after the presentation.
Ways to prepare:
- Ask the Meetup organizer what kind of system is used to run the Meetup, and make sure your computer is compatible.
- Make sure your presentation has no Digital Rights Management (DRM) elements in it. Common presentation software will not allow you to share your screen, or the presentation, when that is the case. Corporate presentation decks sometimes are copyright protected.
- Show up early, as this is a good opportunity to talk to the host and attendees.
- Provide contact details on your slides, in case attendees later have questions.
- Make sure you have a good microphone, no background noises, and good lightning. While most of the time the slides are shown, many meeting room solutions will also show your video in a small window.
- On that note: please don’t turn away from the camera while you are presenting, an empty screen doesn’t look nice. Ideally you are looking into the camera while presenting.
- Let attendees know at the beginning if you take questions during the presentation, or at the end.
- Keep an eye on the chat, in case there are questions you want to answer right away.
- Ideally, the host manages this for you, so you can focus on presenting; check with the host about this.
- Attendees appreciate having the slides. Consider uploading and providing your talk slides. The Meetup host can help you distribute the link to attendees.
- You can upload the slides before the Meetup, and provide a link and/or QR-Code in your presentation.
- It is ok to mention your company or employer on your slides, and if you are hiring. Provide a link to the hiring website, ideally a QR-Code.
Enjoy the presentation!
Checklist
Here’s a handy checklist to make sure you did not forget anything:
- Good fonts, good contrast in your slides
- Live demo covered by a pre-recorded video
- Contact details in your slides
- Post about your talk on Social Media
- Does your computer work with the available presentation system
- For in-person Meetups, do you have a copy on a USB stick
- And a PDF copy
- Upload your slides, let the organizer know the link
- Follow up on questions from the audience
Thank you
I’d like to thank Stacey Haysler, Ellyne Phneah and Sergey Dudoladov for reviewing this posting, and providing valuable input.