Having worked in PC FrontendConf for almost a year, I immersed myself more closely in the subject of conferences and got acquainted with them not only from the position of speaker, but also from the position of a member of the program committee. In this series of articles I will try to convey my experience to you.
Generally speaking, conferences and meetings are increasingly becoming part of the everyday life of developers. We see new events and new faces at these events. The most popular conferences take place over several days and gather several thousand spectators.
But why do people go there? What does it give them? And what does the speaker give? How to understand that my experience is interesting?
In general, all events can be divided into 3 types:
- Corporate
- Mitapa.
- Large conferences.
Corporate events
Now more or less adult companies are conducting internal meetings for developers. This improves the overall engineering level of employees and helps identify potential speakers for external conferences.
Believe me, even in large companies there are not enough good speakers, with a good presentation of material, which are interesting to listen to. Therefore, such events are simply necessary.
If you are a beginner and want to take the path of a speaker, then for a start it is worth going to speak at such events. Usually a program committee in them, if any, is very loyal.
In doing so, you will get a very valuable experience. There will be an audience of several dozen people to whom you will tell and show your material.
Mitapa
These are already external events that are usually held in the offices of large companies. Pass in the evenings, in the program 3-4 reports. At such events, about 50-100 people, sometimes more. The program committee works more organized and quite demanding. There is already a selection. In the world of IT conferencing, this is something like an “Open Microphone.”
Here you can run in the material, practice in public speaking, look at the general level of speakers, meet interesting people and even find work.
Usually a mitap hoster is a large company that wants to attract developers. HR will be happy to show you the office and talk about vacancies if you are interested. Mitap is one of the channels for attracting middle + level developers.
Conferences
The largest events. They gather from several hundred to several thousand people. There is a rather high level of reports, and the program committee works hard and strictly selects all applications. In one of the following articles I will talk more about his work.
Speaking in the main hall of such a conference means that several hundred people will come to your report.
Why attend the conference?
First of all, to look at the top speakers and stars of the profession, listen to unique and hardcore presentations.
Also at conferences you can talk with speakers: after each of the reports, the speaker must go into the discussion areas. At conferences, there are a lot of merchandise and gifts from different companies. Here you can meet famous bloggers, YouTube, podcasts. And often conferences have cool afterparties :)
Networking is one of the main reasons for attending conferences. Depending on the conference topics, both developers and company owners gather here. You can get useful links in your work.
So, with the types of events sorted out. Let's dive further into the preparation of the report.
Timeslot
Typically, slots at conferences are divided into 3 types:
- 5-10 minutes. This is the duration of the so-called lightning talk - short reports that comprehensively reveal one topic.
- 15-20 minutes. The standard duration of a mitap report.
- 35-45 minutes. Duration of the report of a major conference.
Report
When preparing a report, the most difficult thing is to choose a topic. No kidding.
Whenever you start thinking about the topic of a report, it seems that everyone knows that. This is actually not the case. Just accept it. Developers are people who often underestimate their knowledge.
Any topic is good if the quality of the material and the presentation of the speaker are goodConventionally, topics can be divided into several groups.
Rocket science
Straight holy grail for any program committee. Such a report to the conference is accepted unconditionally. And if the speaker is also good, then it will definitely enter the top reports, and maybe it will get on the main stage.
What could it be? For example, W3C implements browser support for the WebAuth standard. Browser authorization by fingerprint, retina and so on. A lecture on this topic with case studies and a demonstration of work is a good example of a rocket science lecture. By the way, this is a real report , it was at Frontend Conf as part of RIT ++ in May.
“Just a good report.”
The topic of such a report can be analysis of narrow typescript cases or analysis of narrow cases of animation work in a browser.
In general, if the title of the report contains the words “analysis”, “immersion”, “deepening” and other synonyms, this means that the report is most likely from among “just good” ones. It all depends on what kind of technology is understood, how experienced is the speaker, how much this report fits the format of the conference.
Company experience
.The report in the spirit of “We did a cool thing ...”, “We use in production ...”, “Our experience of creating ...”.
Such reports are interesting if:
- The experience is interesting and challenging.
- The company has developed something, is open-minded and wants to tell the community about it.
It’s clear that if you wrote SPA in React, Angular or Vue, then this is not an experience worth playing with. Only if you do not have a super compressed bundle, there are no hardcore and cool animations in this project and so on.
Closing report
Usually, the latter is allowed to speak on burnout, career ladder and so on. But they can fall into the main halls.
It all depends on the speaker’s experience, his weight in the community, the relevance of the topic and experience.
Material
Be sure to prepare a presentation!
I know there are reports without slides, but with live coding. But it is difficult.
Why presentation is useful:
- It will help to structure the report and tell it according to plan, based on the theses.
- Listeners will be more interested when the story is visually reinforced.
- Everyone loves memes. And how to show them if there is no presentation?
Demos are welcome!
I'm generally a supporter of demos and all sorts of interactive. Such reports immediately attract the attention of the audience and allow you to hold it.
It is more difficult with live coding: you can fly out of time frames, so you need to prepare for it more carefully. Whenever possible, think over and optimize areas for writing code. It is important not to focus on the obvious things, do a checkout on the branches, instead of writing and parsing the differences. And these are far from all the features.
Preparation process
The preparation process and the work of the program committee with your report may vary depending on the type of conference.
A couple of runs are enough at the meetings, but at the conference they won’t get off you until you provide a 100% verified report. Usually there are a lot of runs! Plus runs with coaches on presentation and report structure. You may be asked to drive the day before the conference on site.
In general, the preparation process can be represented as follows:
- Phoning, acquaintance and discussion of the topic of the report.
- Run and feedback after.
- Somewhere here you are accepted into the program.
- Run.
- Structural run.
- Repeat 4 points N times.
- Run on stage a day or two before the conference.
Finally
This article was the first, introductory. I tried to give general information about the world of IT events and talk about what to do to a novice speaker. Further in the articles I will talk about the work of the PC, the criteria for selecting applications, speakers and stars.