5 ms·

This is a really cool initiative. I've been organizing Canada's largest student tech conference for a few years now, and one issue that comes up year after year

This is a really cool initiative. I've been organizing Canada's largest student tech conference for a few years now, and one issue that comes up year after year is selecting engaging speakers (and how to be an engaging speaker is definitely a skill that can be learned). We end up skipping a lot of potentially interesting speakers because we either don't know, or can't be sure a few hundred university students will enjoy their talk(ing style). The problem is definitely out there, and my best wishes to this project. You may also want to address the burden of proof for speaker qualification.

jnoller 14y ago
Excellent suggestion - suggestions on how? Filed: https://github.com/jnoller/talk-mentorship/issues/11 https://github.com/jnoller/talk-mentorship/issues/11
- Shenglong 14y ago
  Usually I try to devise comprehensive solutions, but there are plenty of smart people on HN - so I'll just give my perspective here: When picking speakers, we typically look for three things: 1. Reach - what cool things have they done that'll make them interesting? 2. Popularity - how well known are they? 3. I they have reach and no popularity, will they be able to express what they've done in a way students will find awesome? Alexis Ohanian came to speak in CUTC 2011, and he was awesome, for example (although some would argue he was pretty famous too). For #3, maybe something in terms of videos for each user in a centralized location
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  I know for the stage I ran at Agile 2012 we looked for things like: * videos of speaking * links to existing decks * feedback on talks from twitter, speakerrate, etc. If we couldn't get any of that I sometimes asked for a few minutes of video of them just pitching their talk idea. I know other stages at Agile 2012 did that to. The "video snippet" idea is one I've seen a few places. The folk who organise IxDA's Interaction conference have done it the last few years for example.

jnoller 14y ago

Excellent suggestion - suggestions on how? Filed: https://github.com/jnoller/talk-mentorship/issues/11 https://github.com/jnoller/talk-mentorship/issues/11

Shenglong 14y ago
Usually I try to devise comprehensive solutions, but there are plenty of smart people on HN - so I'll just give my perspective here: When picking speakers, we typically look for three things: 1. Reach - what cool things have they done that'll make them interesting? 2. Popularity - how well known are they? 3. I they have reach and no popularity, will they be able to express what they've done in a way students will find awesome? Alexis Ohanian came to speak in CUTC 2011, and he was awesome, for example (although some would argue he was pretty famous too). For #3, maybe something in terms of videos for each user in a centralized location
adrianhoward 14y ago
I know for the stage I ran at Agile 2012 we looked for things like: * videos of speaking * links to existing decks * feedback on talks from twitter, speakerrate, etc. If we couldn't get any of that I sometimes asked for a few minutes of video of them just pitching their talk idea. I know other stages at Agile 2012 did that to. The "video snippet" idea is one I've seen a few places. The folk who organise IxDA's Interaction conference have done it the last few years for example.