Virtual Lightning Talks

One of the highlights of the Code4Lib annual meeting is the “lightning talk” rounds. A lightning talk is a fast-paced 5 minute talk on a topic of the presenter’s choosing. They are usually scheduled on an ad-hoc, first-come-first-served basis on the day of the event. They are an opportunity to provide a platform for someone who is just getting started with public speaking, who wants to ask a question or invite people to help with a project, or for someone to boast about something he or she did or tell a short cautionary story. These things are all interesting and worth talking about, but there might not be enough to say about them to fill up a full session timeslot.

“Virtual Lightning Talks” replicates this conference activity online in a virtual meeting environment. Each one-hour block consists of 10 six-minute sessions (one minute for the presenter to take control of the virtual meeting environment and test audio followed by a five minute presentation). Presenters show their work by sharing their entire desktop; the presentation can consist of slides, web browser, command-line shell, or any other application that can be shown on the desktop.

Code4Lib Virtual Lightning Talks is using Google Hangouts. Viewers can watch the event streamed live via Google Hangouts On Air. The talks will also be recorded for later viewing.

Technical Requirements: Google+ account plus the Google Hangouts browser plugin. In addition, the presentations will use Voice-over-IP (VoIP), so you must have a microphone to present (and preferably a headset to eliminate echo).

At the start of the hangout: Presenters will be invited to the hangout. The hangout will open 30 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. If you want to have extra time to test the system and get ready for your presentation, sign in during this 30 minute window.

At your presentation: The em cee will give you full control of the presentation software, and you'll be able to share your full screen with the participants -- they will see what you see on your screen. Audio tones will cue you as to how much time you have left: four tones is four minutes left, three tones is three minutes left, and so forth. Two quick high-pitched tones means you have thirty seconds, and a long high-pitched tone means that time is up. You may want to run you own countdown timer to keep track of time as well.

April 3, 2013 at 1:30pm Eastern U.S. time (see this time in your local timezone). Presenters can come in 30 minutes early to test the environment.

Presenter Signup

Screencasts of individual sessions saved to the Internet Archive are linked below.