Blog - Posts tagged conferenceshttps://www.writethedocs.org/blog/archive/tag/conferences/atom.xml2022-01-07T00:00:00ZABlogSpeaking at Write the Docs — what to expect?https://www.writethedocs.org/blog/what-to-expect-as-a-speaker/2022-01-07T00:00:00Z2022-01-07T00:00:00ZKat Stoica Ostenfeld<div class="section" id="speaking-at-write-the-docs-what-to-expect">
<div class="note admonition">
<p class="first admonition-title">Guest post</p>
<p>This guest blog post was written by our community member <a class="reference external" href="https://twitter.com/Katstodian_">Kat Stoica Ostenfeld</a>.
Thanks for sharing your experience as a speaker at Write the Docs Prague 2021!</p>
<p class="last">We’re happy to share experiences from our community. If you’d like to contribute a blog post about your WTD experiences, email us at <a class="reference external" href="mailto:support%40writethedocs.org">support<span>@</span>writethedocs<span>.</span>org</a>.</p>
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<p>So you’ve been selected to give a talk at WTD; but what does that actually mean?</p>
<p>You took a leap and proposed a talk; well done!
A week or so later, an important email arrived from the Write the Docs folks, telling you that good news, your talk was selected! Congratulations!</p>
<p>So now you’re existing in the in-between; the conference is in the future. Maybe writing your <strong>actual</strong> talk is in the future as well, you might have decided to delay that part until you had confirmation that your talk would be accepted.
As someone who’s just been in your position, since I gave a talk at Write the Docs Prague 2021, I’ve got a few tips and pointers about what to expect, and what to do, before, during, and after the conference you’re giving a talk at.</p>
<div class="section" id="before-the-conference">
<h2>Before the conference</h2>
<dl class="docutils">
<dt><strong>Confirm that you’re giving your talk.</strong></dt><dd>You’re going to receive an email from the WTD folks, asking you to confirm that you still want to give your talk. Once you have, you’ll also receive a request for some personal information about yourself, including your pronouns. This is so that the emcee can give you a proper personal introductions before your talk. It’s really neat.</dd>
<dt><strong>Create your talk.</strong></dt><dd>I’m not at all going to tell you how to do this; your talk has been accepted because some very smart and keen people think it’ll add to the community, and I can’t wait to hear it. I will however, strongly urge you to use the #speakers channel on the WTD Slack while you’re writing your talk. Once you’ve confirmed your talk, you’ll be added to this channel, where speakers from previous WTD conferences still hang out. Come say hi, share any insights, frustrations, ideas, and/or challenges you have; we’ve all been there before. We’re all here to help.</dd>
<dt><strong>Record your talk and send it to the organizers.</strong></dt><dd><p>Since conferences are going to be virtual or hybrid for the foreseeable future, you’re going to have to provide a recording of your talk about a month before the actual conference. If you’re comfortable facilitating, recording, and editing yourself, cool beans!</p>
<p>If you’re not, no worries! Among their legion of capable people, the WTD team has a skilled and kind videographer who you can book for a recording session. For me, this was incredibly helpful. This person did a video call with me, eased me into the process by chit-chatting, and recorded while I gave my talk, effectively to them as a single audience member. Having another person involved made it feel more safe and real to me. Plus, it was great to be able to go “stop, this needs to be edited, I’ll rewind a few sentences” and trust that the capable professional would mark that somewhere in their software and edit it out later. So hey, if you’re in any way frustrated or worried by the thought of having to record, WTD has got your back.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong>Provide a list of any particularly uncommon words.</strong></dt><dd>For accessibility reasons, your talk is going to be live-captioned. This is done by two amazingly talented transcribers – and if you want to know more about how it’s done, there’s a <a class="reference external" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74D61IulEy0">lightning talk from Write the Docs Prague 2018</a>, where one of them explains how it works. Because they’re transcribing by sound, some uncommon words can be tricky. If you’re using unusual words, or if you, like I did, slip a few non-English words into your talk, send a list of these to the WTD organizers after submitting your talk, so the humans involved will be able to do their job.</dd>
</dl>
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<div class="section" id="during-the-conference">
<h2>During the conference</h2>
<dl class="docutils">
<dt><strong>Sign up for and attend a sound check.</strong></dt><dd>Between each other, attendees, and speakers, the organizers of the conference are basically herding cats. Which is something we’re probably all more or less familiar with. We’re also familiar with the initial 2 minutes of any video call being spent on “hold on, can you hear me? My mic’s not working”. To avoid this happening during your live Q&A session, you’ll be asked to book a slot with one of the organizers and do a camera and sound check with them in the actual software used for the conference. It’s a good little ice breaker, too.</dd>
<dt><strong>Your talk! Plus a Q&A session.</strong></dt><dd><p>Your talk will be shown at a given time (in the local conference timezone). Immediately after, there’ll be a short Q&A session where you’re live with an emcee who’ll funnel questions to you from the chat (as well as any they might have themselves). This is where the sound check comes in. This is the only time you’re officially expected to be present and engaging with others.</p>
<p>In some of the Write the Docs documentation about conferences, you might find this phrase or something similar; that speakers are expected to actively participate in the conference. This is, in some ways, a leftover from when conferences were in-person events. For virtual conferences, when I asked, the messaging was this; attend, watch as many talks and be in as many unconference sessions as you want, be there and present for your Q&A; but you don’t have to “perform” or be “visible” for other peoples’ talks etc. You CAN, of course! But let your mental capacity and energy be your guide.</p>
<p>Now, back to the Q&A; prepare to have fun with this! You effectively “gave” your talk a month ago, because you recorded it and sent it to someone else, only for it to be shown a set time to a large group of other people. And they’re all reacting to it at the same time! So, now is when you get to reflect, talk, answer weird and lovely questions. It can be super enjoyable and stimulating. Also, just FYI, this part will be appended to your actual talk when the recording goes on up YouTube.</p>
</dd>
<dt><strong>Unconference sessions.</strong></dt><dd><p>During the conference, participants can schedule unconference schedules to run in the same timeslots as talks. Sometimes, this’ll cause a clash of interests; you might want to hear that one particular talk and be in the Q&A as it’s happening, but also in that interesting discussion that spawned because of that <em>other</em> talk, where you just definitely need to dig into that one point. Stimulating!</p>
<p>My personal advice would be to opt for the unconference sessions; these aren’t recorded, so they’re fleeting in-the-moment situations, whereas the talks (including Q&As afterward) are recorded and will go on YouTube about a week after the conference. But that was my personal strategy; you do you.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
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<div class="section" id="after-the-conference">
<h2>After the conference</h2>
<dl class="docutils">
<dt><strong>Take some time to de-compress.</strong></dt><dd>This is very much a “do as I say, not as I do” thing; after attending WTD conferences, I’ve always gone straight back into work the next day. Including the conference where I gave a talk myself. But honestly, I’ve been a mushy ball of nonsensical half-thoughts for days afterwards. During a conference, your synapses are firing like crazy. Between listening to talks, chatting with other documentarians, finding inspiration in unconference sessions, and possibly also still replying to one or two urgent work emails, your brain is working over-time in the highest gear. The best you can do, right now, is to book one or two days off immediately after the conference. Give yourself time to crash on the sofa, go for a walk, sleep, and let some of that new knowledge and validation really sink in, before you attempt to perform again.</dd>
<dt><strong>Ride the wave.</strong></dt><dd>You just put yourself out there. Others might have noticed. You might be invited to give more talks, participate in podcasts and web casts, connect with other documentarians. Do that, as much as you feel comfortable with.</dd>
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Write the Docs 2020 conferences going virtualhttps://www.writethedocs.org/blog/moving-portland-prague-2020-online/2020-04-29T00:00:00Z2020-04-29T00:00:00ZWrite the Docs Team<div class="section" id="write-the-docs-2020-conferences-going-virtual">
<p>Hello everyone,</p>
<p>We hope that you’re holding up during these trying times.
We are all stuck at home, but still thinking about our docs community :)</p>
<p>Due to the global events and travel restrictions, which are not expected to relax in the near future, we concluded that <strong>we must cancel our on-site Portland and Prague conferences this year.</strong>
Even if the official travel and event restrictions will be relaxed by the scheduled dates, the safety of the community and everyone else comes first, so <strong>we are converting the conferences to online-only virtual events with an adjusted format.</strong></p>
<p>The Portland virtual conference will be held in August, exact dates will be announced soon. The Prague virtual conference will be held in the Autumn, exact dates and Call for Proposals announcement will be announced in early summer.</p>
<div class="section" id="your-portland-conference-ticket">
<h2>Your Portland conference ticket</h2>
<p>If you currently have a ticket to Write the Docs Portland, your options are:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Pre-order a ticket to the online event for 25% and get a refund for the remaining 75% of your original ticket amount.</li>
<li>Convert your existing ticket into a virtual ticket pass, valid for all of our online events until the end of 2021. We plan to move Portland & Prague online this year at least, and offer similar online events next year. Support the Write the Docs organization by helping us cover operating expenses for the next year and a half.</li>
<li>Get a full refund of your original ticket amount on <strong>May 15th, 2020</strong>. This option will happen automatically if you don’t select either of the previous options.</li>
</ul>
<p>Please fill in the <a class="reference internal" href="../../../../conf/portland/2020/ticket-choices/"><span class="doc">ticket processing form</span></a> to let us know which option you prefer.</p>
<p>We’ll be reaching out to all of our sponsors to talk about moving their sponsorship to our online event, and we are excited about offering new sponsorship benefits available thanks to the new format.</p>
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<div class="section" id="what-format-will-the-online-event-have">
<h2>What format will the online event have?</h2>
<p>We’re looking at ways to keep the spirit of our events in a virtual format, so that the event will act as a gathering place for the community.</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Writing Day, where the community works on projects and learns from each other. These will work well remotely.</li>
<li>Unconference, where our community has discussions and shares ideas. We think our Slack network already approximates this pretty well, but we’ll be adding a little extra structure and moderation during the event to help keep the discussions productive and friendly.</li>
<li>Presentations, where we share ideas, insights, and best practices. We’re investigating live and pre-recorded options, with curated and real-time Q&A with speakers and other experts.</li>
<li>Job Fair, matching attendees to sponsors and jobs. We’ll be building on our Job Board, offering our sponsors the ability to showcase the work they’re doing and the roles they’re hiring for.</li>
<li>Unfortunately, our Hike or Boat Ride can’t be done online, but we’d love it if you go out and enjoy a small bit of your local woods or water, at socially responsible distances, on our behalf, and share your pictures or videos with the community.</li>
</ul>
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<div class="section" id="let-s-make-the-most-out-of-the-new-normal">
<h2>Let’s make the most out of the “new normal”</h2>
<p>We are sad not to be able to have our upcoming events in person,
but there are some great benefits to converting the events to an online format.
The biggest benefit is accessibility to the event itself, since people who haven’t been able to travel to our events will be able to speak and attend the virtual events, making the events more accessible to everyone. The lower ticket price will also help more people from all walks of life attend the event.</p>
<p>We’re working hard on putting something in your calendar to get excited about,
and we’re doing the same thing we always do, facilitating knowledge sharing and social connections within our community.</p>
<p>Stay tuned and take care of yourselves and your loved ones,</p>
<p>The Write the Docs Team</p>
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