[group-organizers] Lightning talks?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 02.09.2015 06:17, Dan Stromberg wrote:
> Hi folks.
> 
> What are people's experiences with doing lightning talks at a meetup?

For conferences, the standard 5 minute format works great. For the
Python Meeting Düsseldorf we originally started only having lightning
talks of 5 minutes each (even with timer :-)).

This was fun for while, but then we often found that a topic would benefit
a lot from receiving more attention, so we've since moved to a mix of
short and long talks (from 5-20 minutes, sometimes longer).

BTW: The main argument for initially using the shorter lightning talks
was to get more people participate in the meetings by giving a talk.
Preparing a short lightning talk simply doesn't require as much work
as a longer more in-depth one.

> I guess the thing that concerns me the most is setting up a half dozen
> laptops on a projector they've never been hooked up to before.

The compatibility is not much of a problem anymore nowadays. Projectors
and notebooks have gotten a lot better in this respect.

These days, you have more problems finding the right adapters
to connect to the projector (VGA, DVI, Mini DVI, DisplayLink,
HDMI, Mini HDMI, etc.) :-)

> Do people do a "designated laptop" for the talks, and ask presenters to
> bring their slides on a USB flash drive?

Only as fallback solution.

> Also, what's a good duration?  Maybe targeting 5-10 minutes?

5 minutes is standard for lightning talks and having a timer
adds some extra fun, but then: see above.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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