Speak

Are you interested in speaking at our monthly Meetup?

What you need to know:

  • Commitment. You must come to at least one of our Meetup events and talk to one or both of us (Doug Rider and Mary Ann Aschenbrenner) about your presentation. You’ll get a sense of the event format and audience, and more members will attend if they’ve met you before. We’re not interested in speakers who deliver a talk and never come back, and we want to reduce the risk of no-shows.
  • Local speakers strongly preferred. We want speakers from our community, and we expect to see you at multiple in-person events (when they resume again), whether they are meetups or WordCamps.
  • No sales pitches. You can give a brief bio, which can include explaining what you do or what your company does, but this is not a vehicle to sell your services or products.
  • Topic. We are open to a variety of topics as long as they are WordPress-related. Most of our regular attendees are non-developers. That being said, we are not opposed to occasional development topics. You can look at past meetups for ideas. Some topics are “evergreen” like security, SEO, accessibility, and going over the latest version of WordPress, and should come back up every once in a while.

Scheduling your talk:

  • Our schedule. Typically, we meet on the first Monday of the month at 6pm. If that’s a holiday or we have a scheduling conflict, we’ll try for the second Monday. When you talk to us about your presentation, we’ll let you know what the next available spot is.
  • Reserving the room downtown (for in-person meetups). Due to the building policy, we can’t reserve the room more than 30 days in advance. We can put you on our own schedule far ahead of time, but we don’t want to post the event on Meetup until we can confirm the room reservation.

Announcing your talk:

  • Meetup event post. Aim to have this information ready about a month before the event. During each event, we try to promote the next event, and we try to publish the next event shortly afterwards. You can look at past meetups for examples of the format. We’ll need the following information:
    • Title (maximum 80 characters, and online meetups need to begin with the text “[Online]”)
    • Short description (typically a couple of paragraphs)
    • Photo (optional, 1200x675px or it will be cropped/stretched to that size)
    • Brief bio (optional)
  • Meetup event questions. Please make sure you’re subscribed to event comments in the Meetup group, in case there are questions for you beforehand.

Technical details:

  • Projector details (for in-person meetups):
    • Our projector’s display resolution is widescreen, 1920x1080px. You may want to check your presentation with these dimensions.
    • Our projector has HDMI and VGA outputs, and we have cables for both. We also have adapters for HDMI to USB-C, VGA to USB-C, and VGA to Mini DisplayPort (aka Thunderbolt 1 & 2). If you can’t connect your computer to one of those, let us know ahead of time and we will figure out a workaround.
  • Your computer:
    • Pause or turn off your desktop notifications, otherwise everyone will see them.
    • Change your display resolution if it’s too large (and text is too small for people to read).
  • Your slides/demo:
    • Make sure text on slides or websites is readable – both large enough and with enough contrast. You may need to zoom in if requested by attendees.
    • If you need to log into any websites or services, consider doing that ahead of time. You do not want to inadvertently show passwords or other sensitive information during your presentation.

The meetup event:

  • Arrival time. For in-person meetups, please try to arrive between 5:30-5:45pm, so we can set you up with the projector and confirm it’s working. One of us will typically be there by 5:30pm. For online meetups, please try to arrive by 5:50pm. If you’re not already comfortable with Zoom and screen sharing, feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.
  • Additional instructions for online meetups:
    • Recording. It’s your responsibility to record, process, and upload your presentation (if you choose to make it available). You can begin recording after announcements and introductions, once you’re ready to start the presentation. We recommend using the “Record on this Computer” option instead of “Record to the cloud”. If you only have a free Zoom account, the cloud recording will not be available to you.
    • Screen sharing. You probably want to use the “active window” option when screen sharing, as opposed to the “desktop” option, which shows your entire screen. If you use the “desktop” option, try to maximize your window so the screen share is more focused and doesn’t include extraneous items such as menu bars and other windows in the background.
    • Audience questions. Remember to take frequent breaks during your presentation to answer questions.

After the meetup:

  • Slides. If you have slides and you haven’t already made them available, please post a link to them in the event comments as soon as you can. You can also post your slides before the meetup if you prefer.
  • Recording (for online meetups). Process your video (at the very least, trim any extra parts at the beginning and end, and any sensitive information that may have inadvertently been shared) and upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, or your host of choice. Then post a link to the video in the event comments. Please try to do this within a couple of days, so people who are interested are more likely to watch it.

Hosting an Online (Zoom) meetup:

If you’re the host, please see this page.