It’s one month till BarCamp Saskatoon 2012! You are registered, right? The BarCamp Team is busy making arrangements to ensure the day is a roaring success.
Time for you to start thinking about doing a talk.
If you’re a first-time BarCamp attendee, you are not expected to do a talk (although you can, if you want to). There are other ways to help out: tweet about the fact that you’re going (our hashtag is #barcampyxe). Tell your friends, and invite them if they’re interested. See if your employer would sponsor us. On the big day, come and enjoy the atmosphere, find out what BarCamp is all about, and have a few interesting discussions with good people about fascinating things.
If you have been to BarCamp before but have never done a talk, maybe this is your year. It’s good experience, and looks great on a resume or year-end review. BarCamp is a casual, low-key event; no one is expecting you to be a golden orator. And maybe you’ll discover that you really can put together a talk and deliver it, and share your ideas and experiences with people who want to hear what you have to say. I hope you’ll consider it.
And I know there will be people presenting who have done talks in previous years. They know: it’s worth it to get your thoughts down on virtual paper and air them in front of an interested crowd. I can’t wait to hear what some of the BarCamp regulars have come up with this year.
If this is you: inexperienced speaker, wizened hack, or somewhere in between, head on over to the Attending page and sign up to talk. You don’t even have to know WHAT you’re going to talk about yet (although deciding well in advance and preparing notes or slides is certainly recommended).
You don’t have to have a long talk. Speaking slots are 45 minutes; talking for 30 minutes and allowing for Q&A easily fills that time. But if what you have is 10 minutes of talk, that’s great too.
Every year I hope someone will do a talk about computer animation. Or photo editing. Or being a techie parent. What tools do you use to get your work done? What have you done in the last year to make your job or your customers’ lives easier? What new idea do you want to share with the community, to light a fire within us? What’s exciting in your world?
Please register to attend and buy one of our great T-shirts, designed by Josh Nagy, by October 13. After that, if we haven’t sold out, tickets will be available, but T-shirts won’t. And I hope you’ll sign up to do a talk about something that gets you excited. Together, we’ll make Barcamp Saskatoon one fabulous unconference.
— Kari, on behalf of the Barcamp Saskatoon 2012 team