In any conference, as they grow, external attributes of solidity and maturity gradually accumulate: large halls, professional photo and video filming, slides superimposed on video from the source, but not taken on camera, a dozen or two stands at the sponsors exhibition and other business brochures.

At the same time, one of the growing pains arises: new people are afraid to apply. Not that they disappear completely, but they turn out to be smaller than we would like. Many, and quite in vain, argue in the spirit of "not with my snout in Kalashny series." Using the example of the past Highload ++, let's see how hard it is for a novice speaker . Is it possible to perform successfully from the first time?
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Spoiler: you can. What do you need to do?

Success criteria

Of course, people come to speak for a reason, but for some purpose, its achievement on the part of the organizers cannot always be accurately assessed. For example, a good goal: to find other people who solve similar problems, and share experiences with them. Or hire them to work. And your story is a beacon to which such people will run together. The better you tell, the more they will run together. Therefore, I believe that the average estimates for the report correlate with the achievement of the goals set. And we are able to collect estimates.

My experience says that with a five-point grading scale, an average of 3.75 and below means failure with a bang, 4.50 and higher - a resounding success. The cut-off “report does not spoil the conference” starts somewhere around 4.00.

Let's compare the marks that were received at the last conference for the first time speakers and more experienced ones.




Awl in the bag can not be hidden, it is clear that the speakers for the first time often overtakes failure. But to make an outstanding report from the first attempt is not uncommon. A good level confidently demonstrate most of the speakers.

Let's take a closer look at some typical mistakes that greatly harm the estimates and are often manifested in new speakers.

Matching title and content is a matter of life and death.

The topic of the report may mutate in the process of working on the presentation. Of course, or under pressure from the program committee, which, for example, asks to narrow the topic, there can be very little left from the declared name. It happens that at the time of filing an application, we ourselves do not yet fully understand what we want to tell, and therefore we write a non-specific title. We put on this traditional disregard for the relevance of the docks, and - op! - viewers are not at all what they went.

I do not know the reason that “drowned” more normal performances than this. Imagine that you bought tickets for one performance (roughly speaking it is), and you are shown, albeit very well played, but different. Under such conditions, it will be difficult for actors to save the production.

As a result, in the reviews quite often there is disappointment:

“It was about hardware, not software. Theses are not clearly formulated. The speaker coughed into the microphone. ”

“Here with the name deceived. The report was about optimizing resource load on mobile devices. ”

"In the title about the assessment of tasks, and the report about the evaluation of projects."

Tasks, projects, what's the difference ... And here is a completely epic fail:

“I didn’t expect the report to be about the front end”.

Of course, the program committee is trying to prevent such problems. When we ourselves notice, we draw the attention of the speaker to the discrepancy. And often we meet in reply a bewildered: “Yes? And what did I write in the theses? .. "So: what you wrote in the application is important .

In the short version of the program, on the screens and posters next to the halls there is only the name, name and company of the speaker, and most viewers make a decision based on this information. Therefore, the name is more important than theses. Formulate it specifically, in detail and clearly , and everything will be fine:

"From the description of the report it was not clear what would be so interesting."

Avoid survey lectures.

A little-known fact: it is good to make a review lecture much more difficult than to tell well about how you solved the problem. The key word "good", so it would be convenient to copy-paste material from Wikipedia. A broad story about a certain area is interesting only when the author can supplement him with his ideas, make predictions of the development of the industry, draw attention to problems that have not been noticed. In other words, when the author is a true expert . The necessary depth of understanding of the industry can come to a person even later than public recognition.

Therefore, to declare a review when you are in doubt about the topic of your first speech is a mistake . On the part of the program committees, accepting such a report is also a mistake made, unfortunately, still quite often. Also, do not pay 90% of the time to the review, if you have stated a specific topic, this happens surprisingly often and is in fact not only a mistake, but also a hoax. Don't do that.

The insidiousness of this error lies in the fact that viewers confidently go to the report, for some reason expect discoveries, and then proceed with poison in their assessments, and even themselves do not always understand what exactly they did not like:

"The speaker is good, but the report is not very good."

"Tedious."

"Very general information, I knew almost everything."

"A lot of emptiness."

It hurts especially when this problem is combined with the previous one and people get an overview suddenly:

“He left almost at the very beginning, when he saw that the speaker began to tell“ but how others do ”instead of“ and this is how we do ”.
How others do it I learn from others.
Descriptive diploma damn.

... and copper pipes

In the Skolkovo business school, where Highload ++ and RIT ++ pass, there are many small rooms, several medium and one truly large. If a very popular performance turns out to be in a small hall, everyone who wishes will simply not fit in there. If nobody wants to go to the main for a slot, all the rest will burst. Therefore, only the presentations leading to the preliminary surveys get to the main hall (by the way, if you are a participant in the conference, do not be lazy to complete the preliminary survey, everyone will be better off). Of course, for the “first track” there is an additional moderation: the report must fit the description, be made qualitatively and be suitable for a wide audience (it is impossible to demand from four hundred people deep knowledge in some area). It would seem that everything should be just fine. In the previous diagram we will mark with red dots the reports of the main hall:



And no! There to collect high marks is much more difficult. The rule “you cannot choose - go to the main hall” guarantees that there will always come a non-target audience, to whom the problems you are talking about are just not close. Please note that all the most successful performances of experienced speakers are not marked with red dots. With a comparable quality assessment in the main hall will be lower.

Indicative in this sense is the result of Maxim Dunin , who for the second year in a row spoke in Highload ++ about what happened in nginx. In 2016, he spoke in the middle of the hall and the report received a rating, do not fall, 4.84 . This is absolutely the highest score and the first place, I have never seen this anywhere before. In the fall of 2017, already in the main hall, the same excellent presentation on the same topic from the same author did not come close to the top twenty. I think this is largely due to the difference in the audience.

Against this background, I would like to emphasize the report that received the highest marks. The author - Adel Sachkov from Yandex.Money, spoke for the first time. Let us rejoice at the excellent debut.


If you have solved a task that is relevant for humanity, such as normal collecting logs from a cluster, testing microservice architecture applications or, more simply, the problem of hunger in developing countries , then you can even get to the main hall and speak well to an audience of 500 people on the first attempt. This is an unforgettable experience.

It's impossible to please everyone

Almost always there is someone who does not like your story. This is normal. Diametrically divergent assessments and reviews are a sign that, apart from “your” audience, the report was not targeted. It happens that the topic was initially holivar, there and in the estimates holivar. Look, each feedback group is related to one statement:

"Everything is cool, real immersion."

“This is a really good report. The content matches the title. Inside are non-trivial and non-obvious things. Generally useful. ”

“The impression was that the speaker referred to the NDA each time if he did not know the answer to the question from the audience.”

"They attacked the rake described in the official documentation."

"The best technical report I have visited."

"It is interesting about data compression, the rest is too superficial."

“Strange guys. In a strange way they solved the trivial task. ”

If you come out and get something like that - don't worry, this is normal. When there are those to whom your story has helped, everything was not in vain .

Come speak

You guessed it, right? On May 28 and 29, the next RIT ++ conference festival will take place, and perhaps it’s your report that is not enough for perfection. At the festival there are sections on all topics related to programming: about the backend, about the front end, about system administration, about business, and about project and people management . If you have something to tell you, go here: RHS ++ 2018 Call for Papers .

This is an opportunity to speak in front of several hundred people in person, to get acquainted with more than two thousand colleagues who also make the Internet, get professional video recordings and visit all the reports of interest for free. And free to go to Moscow, if suddenly you, like me, live somewhere else.

We will help you prepare for the performance. The members of the program committee advise the speakers each in their own professional interests, which allows them to catch mistakes and eliminate ambiguities in the substantive side of the story. According to the structure of the performance and the slides, we will also give you feedback and constructive suggestions (this, in particular, I do). You will also have the opportunity to practice your report right on the conference site and get acquainted in advance with the hall where you are to perform. We will do our best to make a good performance.

Come!

By the way, we launched the telegram channel " School of speakers ", where we will publish materials for speakers, tips, webinars, and debriefings. In general - everything you need to make fire reports!