Our tech talks host great speakers in an informal setting every ~3 months. Each series of talks will cover a different topic targeted to an experienced technical audience. Speakers will be invited both from Spain and abroad.
Each edition is usually more related with one specific team and this is the group of people responsible for ensuring that the event meets the expectations of the targeted audience. This means that, for intance, the Frontend edition is co-organised by the Platform team. The teams are responsible for choosing and reaching out (only until first response) to the speakers but also helping them choose the topics they'll speak about and organise the schedule in a coherent way. They are also in charge of giving a long/lightning talk themselves and, if they want, present the whole event :)
Besides the team assigned to the specific edition, anyone who wants to volunteer and will have the time, close to the event especially, to do so, is, of course, more than welcome!
Ideally, we should start contacting speakers 3 months prior to the event.
Our tech talks involve a total of 5 long talks and 2 lightning. Someone from our team should always give either one Lightning or a Long talk. Hence, we should make an initial list of 6 people to contact. If no reply, follow-up after 3-5 days until you get an answer (up to 4 emails sent in total).
Email copy:
Hello Jane Doe,
My name is John Eod, we met last year at techFest.
I am working at source{d} and we are organising a one-day conference focused on infra/ML/front-end technologies. Please, feel free to take a look at our past edition, around infra/ML/front-end, on our website and check out the respective videos.
We saw your talk ******** and this is exactly what we are looking for: an advanced technical talk that, while focusing on a particular framework, is useful for the community as a whole.
Talks are 45min long (~30min for talk, ~15min for Q&A, we have 15min between talks, so no need to hurry) and the topic is up to you as long as it is advanced / new and does not exclude anyone based on just the framework they use. Your talk at techFest is a perfect example of what we are aiming at.
The event will be totally free to attend, and open to everybody (limited to 75 attendees). It will be held on Saturday, MONTH DAY starting from 9.30am and finishing around 5.30pm - including breakfast, lunch, and snacks throughout the day, as well as craft beer and drinks.
We would of course cover your flights and accommodation for the whole weekend so you can also enjoy the city while here.
Looking forward to having you here,
Thank you!
John Eod
When inviting speakers, please check how they present, speak (in English in our case), etc. You can usually find material online. If not, please schedule a short call, in English, with him/her so as to check all this before the actual invitation.
To avoid any last minute schedule changes due to potential cancellations, we should always ask someone from our team to have a long talk prepared. This way, if someone doesn't make it, there's an easy replacement available. If all else fails, please make sure to email all attendees as soon as you know this (please remember to organise visa - if applicable - for this person beforehand to make sure he/she can travel if needed).
From each speaker, we'll need to collect a Bio, Picture, Title & Abstract in order to build the website.
If the speaker is not based where the talk takes place, we'll need to start organising his/her trip asap so that we avoid expensive last minute tickets & hotels.
Email copy:
Hello Jane Doe,
It's great to meet you and to know you will be joining the Infra/ML/Frontend edition of our source{d} tech talks! We're really happy to have you!
As John mentioned, the event will be held on Saturday, MONTH DAY and all talks will cover quite advanced topics so hopefully it will be insightful for everyone, both attendees and speakers together.
The event's schedule is not completely finalised but we will be sharing more details with you soon - general idea is to start with the first talk at 10am and finish them around 5.30pm. There will be breakfast, lunch and snacks throughout the day as well as a lot of beer and drinks to ensure a great day.
Regarding the logistics, we will invite you over to Madrid/Moscow/World for the weekend and expect you at our offices on Saturday.
In order to book the flights, I was wondering if you could send me the following details:
• City/Airport you will fly from
• Dates
• Full name
• ID Number/passport
• Expiration date
• Birthday
• Phone number
I will send you a couple of options that you can choose from before booking the flights of course.
As for accommodation, we will also send you the details and cover for the nights Thursday/Friday-Sunday/Monday (anything from 2 to 4 nights depending on your availability and OOO time constraints). In case you would like to stay in the city for longer (or come earlier) at your own expense, that is completely fine and we will book you the flights accordingly.
In order to start working on the web, we would very much appreciate if you could send us the following at some point next week:
• Picture
• Small Bio
• Abstract of the talk
Please feel free to ask any questions, either via email or phone (+34 653 399 995), at any time!
Looking forward to meeting you in person!
Cheers, Margarida
Usually, speakers will want to use their own laptops because it makes the demos easier to setup and avoids issues. In any case, we need to ask them to send us their slides - we always add them to the description of the videos once uploaded to YouTube.
An email on Monday/Tuesday prior to the event asking them for the slides & telling them about the Speakers Dinner should be enough.
Email copy:
Hello all,
I wanted to quickly take the chance to introduce you all to each other and share a couple of details regarding Saturday.
Firstly, thank you all again for agreeing to join our tech talks and, for the ones not in Madrid/Moscow/World already, for flying/coming over :-)
The weather is extremely hot these days so please remember to pack for that.
As for Saturday, the day starts at 9.30 with registration and the full schedule can be found here.
The event will end at around 8pm but we'd love to have you all for dinner after that. We have a table for everyone at at 8.30pm at a traditional Spanish/Russian/World restaurant not too far from the office so we can all walk there. Please let me know if you won't be making it. Any food allergies, or restrictions, I should be aware of?
Finally, I was wondering if you could all send me your slides (any time till Sunday is fine if you will be using your laptops) so that we can publish them together with the videos. If you'd like to use one of laptops, any time till Friday afternoon would be best :)
Please let me know if I can do anything in the meantime :)
All the best, Margarida
Please follow the README on our Talks repo or ask @serabe for a little hand :)
To easily resize the HEADER pictures, use this handy set of commands:
convert *name_of_file* -scale 1665
The content is very straightforward to edit. However, pictures need to be squared.
To easily resize pictures, use this handy set of commands:
convert *name_of_file* -scale 200
Schedule, order and times varies from event to event. Always try to accommodate local lunch times. Consider a good speaker for after lunch when energy levels are usually low and not putting the best speaker as the first one (as people might be late).
Pro tip: Lightnings are 15min long with no Q&A. Always best not to put them after each other since we'll run behind schedule.
After the last two editions, we started discussing both starting a little later in the day and having sessions of 45min instead of 1h.
As attendance rates are very volatile and hard to predict, we've recently been thinking of implementing some sort of upfront commitment, to ensure we can plan ahead. We discussed charging a fee but also allowing everyone who can't afford that to write us and still get a free ticket - or asking those to volunteer to help out throughout the day, etc.
Our Eventbrite account details are secretly held by Esther - simply because this repo is public :)
Every time there's a new event, simply duplicate the one you feel is most similar to the next one. Usually the talks held at the office are different from the ones that aren't. Set the number of tickets available at at least 150% the number of places available. You can check the metrics of past events here (sheets called "Summary") to better have an idea of what to expect.
Example of 'front page' here.
Details for the back office: • Order Options | Order Form - Ask for Frist Name, Last Name, Email & Company. Make sure to add a question about food restrictions/allergies. Also, each attendee should only be able to get 1 ticket (so as to get the exact names of attendees and their emails). • Order Options | Order Confirmation - If not set, copy paste from old event where you can find personalised messages. • Order Options | Waitlist Settings - Enable waitlist. Maximo 100 people. Full name & Email required. Time to respond: 1 Day. • Manage Attendees | Emails to Attendees - To be copied from previous events. Also, consider mentioning, on the email the sent the day before the talks, that people can join at any time during the day - not to discourage the not-so-morning-on-saturday people :)
Our Meetup.com account details are secretly held by Máximo :)
Each new event, simply duplicate a previous one from our tech talks group. Remember to set the registration as available till the following 5min so that by the time people access it, they can no longer register. This is important as to ensure that everyone gets a ticket on Eventbrite and there are no issues on the day of the event.
• Talks Announcement (after website is ready - speakers list might not be complete) Examples here and here.
• Announcement of Sale start (speakers list might not be complete) Examples here, here and here.
• Sale Start (speakers list might not be complete) Examples here, here and here.
• Optional: If sold out, waiting list ones Examples here and here.
• Schedule Speakers ones Examples here, here, here and here.
• Schedule Printing materials pics ones Examples here, here and here.
• On the day Examples here, here and here.
At the office:comentare Talks are held at Margaret Hamilton and chairs should be set for 75 people. The bathroom on that side needs to be sealed and the only two operational are the ones in the kitchen. Kitchen is where we serve the food and all breaks happen - it should be completely empty and cleaned before and tables put against the wall. Both fridges should only contain things that people can drink/eat. At the door, there should be a table blocking access to the two main rooms in the office so that people go straight to the kitchen.
When the event is outside of Madrid, it's done on a case by case basis but we should definitely look for a place that can host at least 75-100 people. Past editions were held: • ML: Kl10ch (Contact: Kindly ask Esther for the details)
Both Maximo & Esther have the details of the printing company. These need to be sent Thursday latest and they'll deliver them on the next day. Marcelo, or whoever joins as a Designer, will need to get all the specs at the beginning of the week but will know what to send to the printing.
We order our stickers, and any other we print, from StickerMule. The more you order (both in terms of quantity of a single design and in terms of numbers of different design) the cheapest it is, of course. So ideally, let Esther know about this in advance so we can pack that order together with any other :)
Note that StickerMule takes around 2 weeks to ship these from the US.
When the event is at the office, food works as follows: • Breakfast: Fresh juice, Sweet and Savoury pastries, Coffee/Tea/Milk (DO EAT) • Coffee Break: Tortillas (TBD) + anything left from breakfast :) • Lunch: Pizzas (Allo Pizza) + Salads & other (DO EAT) + Ice Cream & Fruit (Tu Despensa) • Beers: Selection of Spanish cold meats & cheese (Esther's Secret)
When the event is outside of Madrid, it's on a case by case basis, ideally the venue takes care of it or helps organising it.
When the event is at the office, we usually ask Origen Producciones to take care of it. They know how we want it and you just need to make sure they are free by emailing them (please ask Esther for the details). Until the end of the event you should also send them the pack-shots for each video cover. Example here and here.
When the event is outside of Madrid, it's on a case by case basis, ideally the venue takes care of it or helps organising it.
In both cases, they should be sending you the videos ready by Friday so that we have them all uploaded latest 10 days after the event.
We usually invite all the speakers for dinner after the event wherever it is held (usually typical/traditional food from the hosting city/country). Past editions were as follows: • Infrastructure: Casa Hortensia • ML: Kazbek Restaurant • Frontend: La Castela
Esther usually takes care of warning our cleaning person that they should come an extra day (on Friday) to clean everything. They already comes every Sunday so that one is taken care of.
Our Welcome Talk and all speakers' introductions are done by someone from the team. This person should prepare their talk and include (at least): 1. Brief company description and a more in depth one of anything we're doing that is related with the topic of the talks; 2. Why we do these talks; 3. Schedule for the day, food and drinks, bathrooms (anything useful to know). At the end of the day, you should again thank everyone for coming, ask them to come to you with feedback, mention we're sending a survey and that videos will be released in 10 days.
Always stick to it. No matter what. Don't start late nor early.
We use Typeform for all things survey and, again, Esther has the secret logins if you need them. Simply duplicate a previous ones, edit names of talks & speakers and anything else you judge necessary and send it no later than Monday at lunch. You should send it to the actual attendees (based on anyone checked in from Eventbrite) and bcc them all in one plain-text Gmail thread (no need for cool designs here). You will later use this thread to tell everyone that videos have been published and can be found at link x.
We keep everything tech talks related in our Dashboard Excel.
Everything you do/try/test/dream about, you should track. If you're not feeling too creative, make sure to at least track everything that allows you to reproduce the Sheets 'Summary' which include: Attendees, Budget (everything), Twitter, Survey, Blog Post.
Videos should be online and ready no longer than 10 days after the event. We/Máximo publish/es them on Youtube. Descriptions should include the slides of the presentations given that you already had asked the speakers for. Attendees should be notified but also anyone who didn't attend or was on the waiting list.
You should also tweet the videos during the following weeks and include them in the post-event blog post (this should be assigned to the team engaged with the specific topic of the talks).