Description:WordCamps are a great opportunity to showcase local WordPress talent and help grow the next generation of rock stars. Often though, people can be super smart and talented and interesting, but terrible public speakers, causing the audience to drift, the message to be lost, and the speaker to get a bad post-event review. Or you can get someone with charisma but outdated or just plain incorrect information about their WordPress topic. This leads to organizers wanting to stock the pool with people they know are good speakers with accurate information, even if this means it drastically reduces the number of new speakers. How do we solve this? Free training, of course!
I’m envisioning a 4-prong approach. 1. General public speaking resources. Links to websites, books, videos. I’ve talked to Scott Berkun about helping out with doing something like short videos around this and he was interested/willing, so he’d be someone to talk to. We could also ask the WC speakers who consistently get good reviews. 2. Speaker “auditions” in meetups Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.. Make all potential WC speakers give a short talk to your meetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. group before choosing speakers, and provide feedback. If not immediately local, do via skype or google hangout. 3. Pre-event review of talks. Require (and enforce) a dry run of talk with slides in person or via video 2 weeks before the event, so speaker feedback can be provided and a technical review of slides/code/facts can correct any innacurate information. 4. Buddy system! For first-time or similarly new speakers, match them up with an expert in the field of their talk to provide feedback and information that can be used in the talk.
Figure out what we should do along these (or other) lines to improve speaker quality and continue to encourage new speakers and grow local expertise. Draw up a proposal, and once we’ve agreed on how to proceed we can put together individual groups to work on each method.
Length of Project: 2-3 weeks to create proposal. After that, ongoing groups overseeing each method, preferably with volunteers who can commit to 3 months of active engagement.
Experience Required: Great public speaker, WordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. speaker veteran, good writer, familiarity with online resources for public speakers.
