[[!meta title="Notes and tips on preparing your talk"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2019, 2020 Amin Bandali"]]
This page contains notes and tips for our speakers on preparing their
talks and presentations. Please read through the list and consider it
while preparing your talk. If you have any questions, concerns, or
suggestions please feel free to write to one of the organizers
directly (e.g. <bandali@gnu.org>), or write to one our organizational
mailing lists: the public <emacsconf-org@gnu.org> list, or the private
<emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org> list, depending on the nature of the
matter you would like to discuss.
Note: being part of a wiki, this page is subject to change (including
by you!); so please check back every now and again for any changes and
updates.
### Code of conduct
First and foremost, we ask that you review our [[code of
conduct|conduct]] when preparing your talk, to make sure we're all on
the same page and strive to make the event a great experience for all.
We would be happy to chat with you if you are unsure whether your talk
or presentation style meets the guidelines laid out in the code of
conduct. You can email Sacha Chua at <sacha@sachachua.com> to chat
more about this.
### Top Tips for Presenters
*Use Headsets for Live Presentations including Q&A*
> To help reduce echo, if possible please use a headset instead of
> external speakers during live presentations including during Q&A.
> Headset microphones tend to have some form of noise-cancelling built
> into them, which might be helpful for decreasing the ambient noise
> captured by the microphone. If you have one, it might be worth
> trying using it instead of a laptop's built-in microphone.
*Prepare recorded video in 720p; WebM formatted if possible.*
> The conference broadcast will be in
> [720p](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/720p) (1280px x 720px,
> progressive) using the [Webm](https://www.webmproject.org/) video
> format. The closer to this format submitted video files arrives in,
> the less work for volunteers.
### Prerecording talks
For EmacsConf 2020, much like the last EmacsConf, we highly encourage
and ask you to please consider prerecording your talk(s), *especially*
for lightning talks, where the allotted time is quite limited and any
potential technical issues that cannot be resolved quickly will
greatly detract from the presentation.
Please send us your prerecording(s) preferably by **November 14** (two
weeks before the conference), or by **November 21** (one week before
the conference) *the latest*, to allow us enough time to do any needed
processing (e.g. format or codec conversion) in preparation for the
event.
Please **send your prerecording(s) via email to <bandali@gnu.org>**,
either in form of attachments (if reasonably small), or direct link(s)
to download from elsewhere. If you need assistance with this, please
write to <bandali@gnu.org> about it.
To make prerecordings, you could use any of the following pieces of
free software, depending on your needs:
- [OBS](//obsproject.com)
- [SimpleScreenRecorder](//www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/)
- [vokoscreenNG](//linuxecke.volkoh.de/vokoscreen/vokoscreen.html)
- [peek](//github.com/phw/peek)
- [ffmpeg](//trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Capture/Desktop)
You might find the following free software programs useful for editing
your video recordings:
- [Kdenlive](//kdenlive.org/en/)
- [Blender](//www.blender.org)
- [Pitivi](http://www.pitivi.org)
You can see more related tips from last year's [[**tips**|2019/tips]]
page.
Per GNU Project's [Guide to
Formats](//audio-video.gnu.org/docs/formatguide.html), we prefer to
receive prerecorded videos in formats unencumbered by software
patents, such as `video/webm` (WebM-encoded video files, with `.webm`
file extension) and `video/ogg` (video files encoded with the Theora
video codec, encapsulated in an Ogg transport layer, with `.ogg` or
`.ogv` file extension). However, if for one reason or another you are
unable to send us your prerecorded video in one of the above formats,
you may submit them in other common formats, like MPEG-4 (`.mp4`), and
we will try to convert them to our preferred formats on your behalf.
### Office hours for video call tech-checks
For EmacsConf 2020 live talks/sessions, we have been evaluating a
number of free software video-calling/conferencing tools, namely
BigBlueButton, Jitsi Meet, and GNU Jami for the video calls with
speakers delivering live presentations. At this point, BigBlueButton
seems to be our most likely choice, and we would like to do
tech-checks with speakers to make sure they are able to use it to
deliver their live presentation(s) and/or live Q&A.
We ask that speakers who plan to participate in Q&A sessions and/or
plan to present live schedule a short tech-check with us in the weeks
leading to the conference, in order to quickly check their ability for
joining video calls and performing common tasks such as sharing their
screen. The office hours will likely be on Saturdays or Sundays, but
we would be happy to try and work out another time if that doesn’t
work for a speaker.
To schedule a short tech-check, email one of the people listed below
or visit with us on [#emacsconf-org on Freenode
IRC](irc://chat.freenode.net/#emacsconf-org).
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<td>Volunteer</td>
<td>Email</td>
<td>IRC Nick</td>
<td>Timezone</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Corwin Brust</td>
<td><<a href="mailto:corwin@bru.st">corwin@bru.st</a>></td>
<td>mplsCorwin</td>
<td>US/Central (UTC-6)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Leo Vivier</td>
<td><<a href="mailto:zaeph@zaeph.net">zaeph@zaeph.net</a>></td>
<td>zaeph</td>
<td>CEST (UTC+1)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Bhavin Gandhi</td>
<td><<a href="mailto:bhavin192@geeksocket.in">bhavin192@geeksocket.in</a>></td>
<td>bhavin192</td>
<td>Asia/Kolkata (UTC+05:30)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Your Name</strong></td>
<td><your@email></td>
<td> </td>
<td> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Amin Bandali</td>
<td><<a href="mailto:bandali@gnu.org">bandali@gnu.org</a>></td>
<td>bandali</td>
<td>US/Eastern (UTC-5)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
If you'd like to help out with the tech-checks, feel free to add your
name and email to the above list and email <bandali@gnu.org> to plan
the logistics.
### Tech checklist:
- Can you speak and be heard? Is there echo?
- Can you hear the organizer?
- Can you share your screen? Is the screen readable?
- If you plan to show your keystrokes, is that display visible?
- If you want to share your webcam (optional), can you enable it? Is it visible? Will there likely be distractions in the background?
- Can you view the collaborative pad? Will you be comfortable reviewing questions on your own (perhaps by keeping it open beside your shared window), or will you need a volunteer to relay questions to you?
- Can you share contact information (ex: phone number) so that we can get in touch with you in case of technical issues or scheduling changes?
