Tips for speakers at the Sydney Salesforce Developer Group as at July 2017

1. A GUIDE FOR
SPEAKERS
S Y D N E Y S A L E S F O R C E D E V E LO P E R G R O U P

2. FIRSTLY, THANK YOU
• Thank you so much for taking the time to share what you know with the group, we
appreciate all our speakers and the effort you put into preparing.

3. LOGISTICS
• We have a VGA projector, so bring a dongle from your laptop for that output.
• We can provide WiFi internet connectivity.
• If you need anything else (Whiteboard etc.) let us know before hand.
• Arrive at the start time, we usually have food beforehand and you can setup whilst
people assemble.

4. TIPS FOR A GOOD TALK
• Think of the knowledge you want people to take away from your presentation to help
focus your talk.
• Keep your talk to 20 minutes, longer than that and you’ll lose people’s attention
• Give either a general overview OR a deep dive into a specific aspect of a technology
– General overview: ‘An introduction to Salesforce Lightning’
• Here you’ll be sketching out the key features/capabilities of a feature
– Specific topic: ‘Understanding Event propagation in Lightning’
• Give a *very* brief general introduction (1-2 minutes) to provide context and then dive into the
topic
– You can always come back and present again, too much is… too much.

5. TIPS (CONTINUED)
• Use high contrast slides with strong differences between colours
– Our projection equipment is a little old.
• Go big with fonts
– Small font sizes, particularly in code, are hard to read, so think 16pt fonts or larger, or learn
how to zoom your code samples so people see them
• Be real
– Don’t fake it, if you haven’t done something admit it, if it didn’t work out, own it. Being real
adds a lot to creditability.

6. TIPS (CONTINUED)
• If you are giving a demonstration, consider the failure conditions (System down, Internet
out, unforeseen bugs). We’re a developer group so we understand that failures happen
and it’s not a big deal, but it will help you if you mentally prepare either a plan B or
remember not to freak out if things don’t work well!
• Developers in general and our group are fairly reserved, so don’t be too worried if you are
seeing blank faces, its usually because they are just processing what you are saying.
• Consider gender neutral pronouns or mixed gender examples, we have a diverse group of
attendees.
• Keep it clean (nothing offensive please, including racism, sexism, or the like).
• Have Fun! This isn’t the Oscars, its an informal gathering of peers hanging out sharing
stories and knowledge!

7. LASTLY, THANK YOU
• Thank you so much for taking the time to share what you know with the group, we
appreciate all our speakers and the effort you put into preparing.