We will aim to have cabled network for speakers, as well as the conference venue's wifi. However, as experience shows, relying on Internet during talks is a risky game, so we advise you toconsider having a backup plan available to be able to give the talk without Internet connection.
We have very limited USB-C to HDMI, mini-DisplayPort to HDMI and Lightning to HDMI adapters available in case of emergency. It's always a good idea to bring your own.
If you are speaking, please test your notebook and adapter with the TV available in the Speakers room (Liffey Board Room 3).
Please also check our tips for speakers below.
Due to COVID concerns, we will not have water dedicated to speakers. We will have water coolers at every floor. Please bring your own bottle and refill it before your talk. If you don't have a bottle, we will have limited supply of single-use paper cups available.
Yes. We are not offering poster printing service, only the panels to attach them to.
Posters should be portrait DIN A0 sized: 84.1cm wide Ă— 118.9cm high.
Poster sessions will be in The Forum. You can hang your posters on Wednesday, to be displayed throughout the conference. But please be there to discuss your poster with our attendees in the scheduled session. The poster presentation will overlap with lunch so more attendees have a chance to interact.
There won't be tables in front of each poster.
Please log in to pretalx via (https://program.europython.eu) using the email address you submitted your proposal with and select the talk title that you want to edit. Edit the abstract/ description and then click on the save button.
Yes, we will be releasing speakers in the 4th week of June. You'll receive an email from our program team program@europython.eu
For those of you who have purchased tickets before the schedule was announced and thus already have a ticket – please still use the voucher we're going to send you; This is a special ticket type that unlocks a "Speaker" badge – if you want a speaker badge, please configure a new ticket. :)
Your old ticket can be refunded after you have procured the speaker ticket – please send us an email at refunds@europython.eu and we will cancel your old ticket and refund the money.
You can also donate your already purchased ticket to our Financial Aid programme those will be put to good use and automatically go into the financial aid budget for the conference – in such case, please let us know and we will cancel your old ticket without a refund.
A lightning talk (LT) is a short presentation which must not be longer than five minute.
To sign up for a lightning talk, please put your name and topic on the whiteboard close to the registration desk.
Signing up is on a first-come-first-served basis. The queue is reset every day in the morning.
You may talk about / present (almost) everything with certain boundaries:
- no promotion for products of companies, no call for 'we are hiring' (but you may name your employer).
- conference announcements are limited to one minute only
- one LT per person per conference policy
- keep it short, the shorter the presentations, the more people can give a talk
In particular, please check your talk time. The session chairs will have to make sure that all speakers only use the assigned talk time, so that the tracks don’t run out of sync.
There are also some important technical things to prepare your talk at the conference:
- test your notebook with the projector in the room where you will be holding your talk
- make sure you have the right HDMI adapters with you
- make sure the projector resolution (they are all Full HD) is supported by your notebook
It’s best to do all of the above a few hours or a day before your talk. In case of problems, you can then try to find alternative solutions, e.g. borrow someone’s notebook for the talk.
It's ok to mention your company is hiring and include one slide for this at the end of your presentation. This should not take longer than one minute.
A few tips for giving a great talk at EuroPython...
This is the most important tip of all. The more practice you've had, the better your talk will be. Practice at home, practice saying it out loud, try to find some real people to try it out on - friends, family, co-workers.
Try to give your presentation to your colleagues in the office, maybe at lunchtime. Find your local Python user group or a meetup and give the talk there.
And when you do it, get feedback, get a feeling for what works well and what doesn't, and make changes to improve your talk.
This is such a common mistake — it's so tempting, you just gather your thoughts as bullet points, and then on the day, there they are, in big massive letters behind you on a huge screen! Much bigger than your laptop. So you turn away from the audience, look up behind you, and read your bullet points out one by one…
But that's a terrible talk! First off, you've broken contact with your audience, which makes them feel less engaged with you. Why should they listen to you if you're looking away from them? And secondly, reading out bullets out loud is actually worse than either saying the words, or just letting the audience read them (there have been studies about this).
So, resist the temptation to turn towards your slides. And then make sure your slides aren't just bullet points that repeat what you're going to say. Your slides should illustrate what you're saying, they should complement your words, not repeat them.
The “notes” feature in your presentation tool is where you want to keep reminders of what you want to say. And you can always publish them later if you want to give people something to read.
Read about The Hero with 1000 Faces. It might be a tech talk and full of facts, but every talk can be made into a story, into a journey. Put yourself in the audience's shoes. Take them on a journey.
Start off with a goal for an adventure (“we need to scrape 10,000 websites”), meet some monsters along the way (“javascript! iframes! tables for layout! ie6!”), and then come back home with magical gifts for your people (“tips for scraping bottomless web pages!”).
Pictures instead of bullet points in slides. Pictures are great. Everyone loves cats. Throw in some jokes. Even bad jokes. Even a really bad pun.
Demos always go wrong. Have a backup plan. What if the wifi doesn't work? Can you prepare a version of the demo with screenshots instead?
Don't live-code. Just don't. Even if you think you can type pretty fast, you can't type as fast when you're nervous and in front of 500 people.
You're interested in what you're talking about, right? That's why you proposed a talk about it. Convey that to your audience. Make them care about it too. Jump up and down. Smile.
Pro tip: standing in front of 500 people is scary. But the physical symptoms of fear (fast pulse, sweat, heightened alertness) are the same as the symptoms of excitement. So convert the fear into excitement, and you're good to go!
As well as excitement, you can use body language to project confidence, even if you're terrified inside (“fake it til you make it”). Science shows this works!
Another common mistake is forgetting the microphone. If it's a fixed microphone, don't turn away from it, or move backwards and forwards. If it's a microphone you hold in you hand, eat the mike! You have to have it really close to your mouth, and pointing towards it. Think of it as an ice cream. It should be close enough to lick it (yum!)
This is hard. Because I want to say “fast-paced talks are better”. But, when you're nervous, you tend to talk fast, and that's bad. Especially because a lot of people (even you!) might not be a native English speaker. So, force yourself to speak slowly and clearly. But! Don't let people get bored.
Instead, know your audience. Try and anticipate what they can guess, don't spend too long on things that are obvious (but remember that what's obvious to you may not be obvious to everyone). If it's obvious where you're going, then get there quickly! But when something is deep or not obvious or counter-intuitive, slow down. Pause. Give people time to realise it's true.
You'll have a chance to get in the room before your talk and check your laptop works, that you can plug it into the projector, and find out what the microphone situation is. Make sure you use it! It'll give you a chance to get a feel for what the stage area is like, so it won't be a big surprise on the day.
Also, think about the font size in your slides. You may need to adjust your code examples so that they are readable.
Remember, Python people are lovely :)
Even the worst, most nervous presenter is always forgiven, because we all love Python, and we love hearing stories about it.
We recommend using LAN cables to ensure that you have proper internet connection. Ensure that you do not have too many apps/ processes running in the background.
We'll be using zoom to broadcast you live during the conference. Do ensure that your webcam is clean and your surroundings are clean. If possible then position your webcam in such a way that your face covers 75% of the video feed.
We've seen that in-built microphones pick a lot of background noise. To avoid that please make sure that you are using a dedicated microphone during the presentation.
Just open your speaker ticket and click on the "Join online event" green button to join Venueless, our online platform. Should you face an issue, do reach out to us on the speakers channel for remote presenters in case of emergencies.
More tips incoming..
