News

Elastic Contributor Program: Tips for speaking at an event

By
Anna Ossowski

Speaking at an Elastic meetup is a great way to share the story of how you use the Elastic Stack. But it also allows you to learn from the community via feedback and questions — as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, “While we teach, we learn.” By sharing your use case with an Elastic user group, you might even deepen your own understanding of your own setup, or make someone’s day by helping solve a problem they’ve been struggling with. You’ll also contribute to relevant open source discussions and build your speaking profile as an Elastic expert. Finally, you can receive points and win awesome prizes for speaking at meetups via our new Elastic Contributor Program.

When it comes to preparing for your talk, here are a few tips:

  1. Consider your audience. If you’re presenting at an Elastic user group, there’s a good chance most attendees will have some knowledge and hands-on experience with the Elastic Stack. Experience levels will differ from newbies to expert users, so plan accordingly.
  2. Take a look at the Elastic Code of Conduct. All Elastic user group communities adhere to the Code of Conduct, so make sure you give it a read and keep it in mind as you prepare presentation materials.
  3. Choose a talk title, create a short talk abstract, and write a bio. The title and abstract is what people will read in order to decide whether they are interested in attending your talk or not, so make the title as catchy as possible and add the most relevant information to your abstract but keep it concise at the same time (we recommend two short paragraphs at most). The bio is all about you as the speaker. You can add information about your current role, past experience, as well as a fun fact about you. If you don’t want to write the bio yourself (writing about yourself in the third person, can be weird), why not ask a friend to help you? 
  4. Think about your presentation style. Do you want to present a demo? A hands-on lab? A Q&A session?
  5. Outline your presentation and create slides. An outline can help you organize your thoughts. There are many different tools available for slide creation (Google Slides, Powerpoint, Keynote) — play around with them and pick your favorite.
  6. Practice and review your presentation. Perhaps you can test it out during a Lunch & Learn session with your colleagues at work? They might be able to give you helpful input on how to make your presentation even better.
  7. Help us promote your talk by sharing details about the meetup on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media platforms you use.
  8. After your presentation, be sure to celebrate your achievement!

For a more in-depth overview of speaking at an Elastic event, please read our user group speaker guide. If you’re looking for inspiration from past presentations, you can find a few of our recent favorites here:

Do you already have a cool topic in mind and are ready to present at a future meetup? Great! Please reach out to us at meetups@elastic.co and a member of the Elastic Community team will be in touch with you to coordinate the date and time of the event. Our developer advocates are also happy to provide you with technical guidance and suggestions for your talk. 

We are currently only hosting virtual events, so you have the huge advantage of being able to present to a wide audience from the comfort of your own home. We can’t wait to learn about your Elastic story, and look forward to hearing you speak at a meetup in the very near future!