SF Lightning Talk Night

I was talking with Eugen last night about an idea I had and he thought it would be a good idea to post about it here.

The idea is to host a night open to the public with “lightning talks”, the purpose is to become more connected with the community, increase members numbers and have a platform for existing members (and nonmembers) to talk about what they’re working on.

I would propose a format something like this.

  • Each talk is 5-10 minutes, with 3-5 minutes for questions
  • A hard cutoff at 10 mins
  • A 20 min break after 3 speakers. For people to bio, chat, ask more questions to their speakers
  • Find some sponsors for beverages and maybe food
  • 9-12 speakers total.
  • Speakers can choose to have slides, but the PDF must be submitted before and merged into a master slide deck.
  • We use one computer for the whole thing, no setup time needed.

We would be able to cover a very wide array of topics: AI, electronics, software, bio hacking, crafting, whatever, etc, etc. Which would draw a larger crowd than one niche deep topic.

Let me know what you think. It would be sometime in September/October when it’s less hot and people are back from holiday.