Drupal Camp Toronto 2007

The “Speed Geek” is an energetic fast-paced presentation structure invented by Aspiration Tech to do technology demos. It’s also been used to present ideas, which is mostly how it will be used at DrupalCampToronto.

We can have as many presenters for this as would like to show off their stuff. If we get more than 10, we'll overflow into a second round of Speed Geek presentations. The presenters are arranged in stations around the periphery of a very big room. The other participants are broken up into small groups (10 or so people) and each group is sent to one station. Each presenter has a single idea they present. They have five minutes. Every five minutes, a bell is rung, and the groups rotate.

At the end of 60 minutes, everyone has heard all 10 presentations. (And each presenter has presented their spiel 10 times).

What it’s for

Different people are coming to DrupalCampToronto with really different expertises, backgrounds, and expectations. For most of DrupalCampToronto event, people are able to self-select among lots of different activities. The Speed Geek is a fast way to get an intimate presentation with from a number of participants -- sort of sampler of some of the major idea of the event, and a demonstration of how people are putting Drupal to work in the "real world."

How it’s programmed

Basically, there will be an announcement on Friday morning. There will be a sign-up sheet. You sign-up, you show up, you get five minutes to present. Bring you own laptop!

Isn’t 5 minutes impossibly short?

Yes. Of course. That’s part of the fun. The idea is to explain enough to people that they have some idea of the core point, and can tell whether their interested enough in the idea to want to learn more about it later at the conference. If you want to do a longer version of your speed geek session later in the event, we would really encourage that.

Support for Speed Geek Presenters

We can help you prepare, and think about strategies to take. At the event itself, we’ll have Phillip Smith on hand as a sort of Speed Geek Coach. He’s done several of these, and will be there to help with any last-minute questions and advice.

Why you should do it:

1) It’s fun and exciting

2) It lets you meet lots of people at the event, early on, in smallish groups

3) It lets you get your presentation heard by everyone at the event

4) We want you to do it, and it would make us happy.

Some ideas to make it your presentation great

• Really focus on a clear concise presentation
• Work on your presentation. Practice it. Time it.
• Think about being entertaining. The groups will be listening to a lot of presentations in a row. The more you can do to make your talk dynamic and interesting, the better.
• Keep it super-short. If you can get your presentation to 2.5 minutes, that leaves 2.5 minutes for questions.
• Feel free to use visual aids – a simple diagram, a prop, an object. If you can find a physical example that illustrates the idea your talking about, that’s great. Analog is probably better than digital here – 2 or 3 images on cards is probably easier to handle than having to fuss with a powerpoint presentation.
• Focus on information, not opinion. Even if the point of your presentation is to make a strong argument, we’d much rather you offer information that supports the argument, rather than actually making the argument itself.

Questions: pop them in the comments below.