Leeds MoT Chaper Start Speaking Workshop

First published in 2020. 

We had such positive feedback for the session we ran on Thursday the 23rd of January. I thought it might be useful to write up the details as it might help others who want to start speaking. I should begin by thanking Saskia Coplans and the InfoSec Hoppers for providing help and information that contributed to this session.  

 If you are looking to run your own session, the format is listed below, and then I’ll go into a little more detail.   

After our usual welcome, we set the outline of how the evening would progress.  

Lightning Talks 

To start us off, Colin and Natalie both gave lightning talks on speaking tips and their experiences. We thought it was important to have a couple of examples of talks, and having them on the subject in hand was even better.   

I joined Natalie and Colin in working through set questions all related to speaking. The questions with brief summaries of the answers are detailed below.    

Panel questions:  

You will find links to download the worksheet at the end of this article.   

Working in pairs, we encouraged the attendees to write their bios and then give each other feedback on what might make the subject of a talk. Whether they had more questions about anything included, or if there was anything interesting. Each part was given 10 minutes, so 20 in total.  

It was interesting walking around the room and listening in to conversations. How many times people said things like, ‘there’s nothing interesting in mine’ or ‘I don’t know what to put’. After a few open-ended questions and a little probing, it didn’t take long to find potential areas they could speak about.  

I believe some of this was due to self-belief or a lack of confidence, and as I said on the night, everyone has things to say because their experiences are theirs alone. I honestly believe that everyone involved in the creation of something (our context is tech, but I think it equally applies across creative industries) has had a conversation in the last two weeks that could be the subject of a lightning talk.   

I offered up my own bio as an example of one. From it, could you guess I talk about accessibility a lot?  

Adrian ‘Ady’ Stokes. A long-time accessibility advocate with over 20 years’ experience in Audit, Business Intelligence and Test roles. With a thirst for learning and continually improving, he's always looking for ways to share information from my blog to a monthly newsletter and global quality initiatives at work. He is a great believer in community and helps the great one in Leeds by co-organising the Ministry of Testing Meetup. WebAIM found that 98% of 1 million home pages failed WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) in August 2019. We can and must do better! “I believe accessibility is fundamental to applications and greatly undervalued, causing many problems for lots of users. I'm trying to spread the message that accessibility isn't about disability, it’s about inclusion!” 

The second part was all about generating talk ideas, with the pairs providing feedback for each other again. Again, there was a similar feeling of not having things to talk about, and I had similar conversations to the first part.  

Whatever you are passionate about. Whatever challenges you have had, failed at or overcome. Whatever really winds you up or you wish were different. These are all bases for talks. Find 3 related parts of that subject, and you have yourself the basis of a conference talk.   

Thank you from the Leeds MoT Meetup organisers, Suman Bala, Steven Burton, Colin Wren and me, Ady Stokes. Written on palindromic day, 02-02-2020 

Note: I can't attach documents, so here is the worksheet. You can copy it to a document, add a tables and do it yourself.

Ministry of Testing Leeds – Start Speaking Workshop

This worksheet is a starting point to help guide you towards writing a talk proposal. We hope you will find a topic
where you can be part of our ‘New Voices’ event in May.

Everybody has experience, no matter what the source is. Yours, while shared, will be yours alone. You have a
unique take on your experiences, so put things down even if you think they might not be relevant. E.g. Ady Stokes is an Accessibility Advocate, creator of the Periodic Table of Testing and a Ministry of Testing Meetup organiser. (He/Him)

Part 1: Bio:
Generally written in the third person
Think jobs, projects, experiences (time or variety) and
accomplishments
Include personal experiences if you want
What are your values?
Start with what makes you, you?

Feedback
What elements could be the subject of a talk?
What do you want to ask more questions about?
What do you find interesting about the bio?

Part 2: Talk ideas:
You do not have to be a domain expert to talk about something! And it doesn’t have to be technical. But it is worth
taking some time to assess your own knowledge and experience for things you could share. Don’t dismiss anything,
as even if you think others have done it, it’s not been from your perspective.

Ideas
Here are some questions to get you started.
What personal experience do you have with this
tool/process?
What are the most interesting things you learned
while using this tool/process?
What would you do differently if you were to use this
technology/process again? How did you come to
those conclusions?

Feedback
What about the ideas interest you
What would you like more information on
Is the message being given understandable
Ask some questions. It will help the person
understand what they are proposing

Enhancing your abstract ideas:
Three is a nice, round number of “key takeaways” to highlight in a talk proposal. For example: “By the end of this talk
about X, audience members will have a basic understanding of (1) the use cases for A, (2) the trade-offs involved in
centralising B, and (3) the class of problems that C can bring.”

Add a brief statement about the problem that is being solved. Then put it together so the following questions are
answered:

Have a go at writing your first draft of your abstract and let me know how it went in the comments.