---
tags: unconference
---

# Unconference talk preparation (for speakers)

Thanks for offering a talk at the Nordic-RSE unconference. This gives some ideas, based on our experiences and expectations.

The main thing to remember is that our talks are less formal and hopefully more interactive. This means that you may not need to prepare as much as for other academic talks (and certainly need less effort on fancy graphics). A good outline of some points to cover and then a demo is plenty.

## Audience interaction

This is the most importart part which everything else is build around, so lets start with this.

We have found that using HackMD is a great way to do this: it's an online interactive document a lot like Google Docs and so on, but with markdown. You can give it a try here: https://hackmd.io/new . All talks will have some HackMD to go along with them (provided by us, or you can make one specific for your talk). People will ask questions/give comments, and perhaps someone else in the audience will answer. You can discuss by voice anything interesting, too. HackMD can also be used to share links with the audience.

The advantages of HackMD is that we aren't limited to one person talking at a time (or biasing towards people who are more willing to interrupt others). There is also the opportunity for more answers. Of course, you should always accept questions by voice, too - during the discussion time it tends to become a combination of both.

We recommend that you keep it where you can view it at all times while you are presenting. If you share on your screen itself during discussion times (or a little bit during the talk itself) it can encourage people to interact that way.

https://coderefinery.github.io/manuals/hackmd-mechanics/

If you create a new HackMD for your session, please make sure to reference it from https://hackmd.io/@nordic-rse/unconference and also make sure it is editable by others.

## Preparation

You have probably practiced giving some events via Zoom, so likely there is not much technical difficulty.

It is perfectly fine and normal to ignore "slides" and have free-scrolling text as your main points. When coupled with demo and screen-sharing, this will make a great event.

With the Zoom client application, you can "share a portion of the screen" (under advanced). If you can, it is good to not share your full screen, but only half, vertically. This allows the audience to view your demo at the same time they have half of their screen available for their own work/follow-along/hackmd/etc.

If you present a demo in the browser or terminal or editor, please make sure to check the font size and contrast. It can be also useful to share your [terminal history](https://coderefinery.github.io/manuals/instructor-tech-setup/#terminal-history-window).

## Content

We generally like to have lots of discussion, and for longer sessions it would generally be a good idea to plan for half of the time for your presentation and half for discussion.

It's good if the content is available online so that anyone can see it.

You are probably the expert here, so we don't need to say much.

## Mentoring/help preparing

If you would like help preparing, the best is to ask everyone! If you sign up for the Nordic-RSE chat and give your drafts, people will comment. Don't worry, it's normal that we ask for feedback on work-in-progress things. You can learn about the Nordic-RSE chat here (combined with the CodeRefinery chat) here: https://coderefinery.github.io/manuals/chat/ . We recommend that you ask in the #nordic-rse stream, make a new topic and ask away!

You could also ask someone to take a look in private, but public is probably better overall.

If you are still in the planning phase, you could (for example) either chat with your thoughts or write your ideas somewhere (HackMD is good if no where else) and then ask for feedback.

If you do have some content already, make that available for browsing and you can get feedback that way.

We have also scheduled a general call/mentoring session where you can join and talk about things, which all presenters are invited to. You can join there for discussion on content and a tech check, if you want. It is at https://uit.zoom.us/j/63566985867 at 13:00 CEST on Thursday 2021-06-24. We hope to see you there!

## Dynamic schedule adjustments

We might already schedule your talk in advance, but also it is likely to be scheduled dynamically during the unconference, too, after we see all possible submissions.

In addition, the point of an unconference that we can add new sessions during the event. For example, a short talk can turn into a medium discussion on the next day. Perhaps some sessions can spawn other session ideas.