 There we go. Right. Welcome, everyone, to this session today. So the agenda for today is the structure of the call today would be we go through kind of an introduction for about 15 minutes. Then we have two special guests today. And one is Yuchiro. And the other one is Sebastian. And then we will have plenty of time for questions. And we have all experienced speakers that can answer your question. But before going to our special guest, I just want to give the floor to the program team who would be sharing kind of the logistics of the presentation during the Euro-Python. Who wants to go first from the program team? All right, perfect. I can probably go ahead. So hello, everyone. I'm Vibi. And I, along with Arthur, if you can unmute yourself and say hello to everyone. Hello, everyone. I'm Arthur. Thank you. All right, so we along with a huge array of group of volunteers, some of which are here, like Rodrigo, and Cyril, and Kefanes, and so on and so forth. And of course, Diego. All of us are sort of responsible for making sure that we have a fantastic program. And the program, of course, is built by all of you and a lot more of you who are not here and so on. So we're just going to keep it short and chill. So I'm just going to quickly walk you through how the D day would look like for you all. So the day when you present your talk, how that would look like for you all. So essentially, your talk would either be of 30 minutes or 45 minutes. This time is inclusive of Q&A. This is also inclusive of your introduction time and so on. So essentially, you get 30 or 45 minutes, depending on whatever slot we're able to sort of provide to you or duration, we're able to provide to you. You're going to have like that much duration, inclusive of introduction and Q&A. And in terms of like what devices you can use to present, we're flexible with any device as long as it is widely available. So Macs, Windows, Linux, so on and so forth, you can present through any of those. And more often than not, we'll have an adapter for it. But if it's a special device, we recommend you to carry an adapter which would work with a reasonably sound projected to carry with you. Or just let us know ahead of time, just send us an email at program at the rate. And I'm sure we'll work something out. In terms of the actual presentation, the program team and the EuroPython organizers have zero oversight in terms of what you present. And we take huge pride in that we do not want to sort of moderate what you present. We do not want to have like any say in what you present. So long as what you present abides by the code of conduct, which by the way, you agree to when you sort of purchase your speaker ticket, which you would get a link for in the next one or two weeks. Sooner rather than later. Right. And then in terms of like the actual presentation that you present, so long as you're able to present. So you're using a software, which is like Google Docs or PowerPoint presentation, PDF. All of those should work out. And in terms of like room sizes and so on, like as you prepare for something like 60 to 180 people in your room. So that's the kind of room sizes we have. Of course, what room you would actually present in would differ from talk to talk and what kind of availability we have during the schedule at that point in time. But at an average, preparing 400 people in your presentation is something that you should sort of prepare for. That's it. After your sort of talk is done and once the conference is done, a lot of attendees do ask for presentation, like the presentation that you present. So we do recommend uploading your PowerPoint presentation, GitHub repository, whatever it may be, over to pre-docs afterwards. There is an option to it and we'll, of course, send you an email afterwards as well. But that's pretty much it for any specific queries and so on. Feel free to send an email at program at the rate www.europython.eu and one of us from the team would get back to you. Before we head over to Q&A, Artur or Diego or Rodrigo, would you like to add something? I think that's pretty much it. Going to talk to the timing thing. So you mentioned 30 or 45. There will be like a five minute break or a lunch break or a coffee break after your talk. So there will be time to switch. That's not included in that 30 to 45 minutes thought. That 30 or 45 minutes thought is only the talk plus the Q&A. Oh, yeah. And which reminds me that if you have like, so 15 minutes before the talk, we expect you to be near the room that you're supposed to present. And essentially, there will be a room volunteer always present there who would be responsible for making sure that you have a great experience presenting. And in case you have any issues, then they will make sure that we have, you know, that we are able to resolve whatever issue you have as soon as possible. So like we won't just like leave you to present. We would like we will always be there with you every step of your presentation. So don't worry about that. Yes. And session chairs will keep track of the timing. So in case you run out, there will be somebody in the room to let you know that you run out of time. Yes. I think it's very important. VP, I don't know if you mentioned or not about all the record, all the talks that would be recorded because like every year, then we publish these on our channel on YouTube as well. Yes. And that's, I think that's also part of the waiver that everyone signs at this, like Wednesday when they submit their CFP that they're OK with us recording and then later on publishing their talk on our YouTube channel as well. So yeah. Right. All right. If there is nothing else from the program team, I guess if you have questions specifically to the logistics of delivering the presentation, I think now is your time because we have everyone from the program team. You have the right people to ask them. And actually, while you're thinking there is one in the chat from Sebastian, do you expect any issues with ADHD, CP, HDMI in combination with MacBooks? Yeah. I just know HDMI. I don't know what HDS, HGCP mean. But like HDMI works and it's safe to assume HDMI works. I think I can answer this question probably a bit better. So yes, we do sometimes expect problems with HDMI or even sometimes with proper adapters, whether it's Apple specific or other adapters. Sometimes we do have these problems, especially the newer ones, mostly because the resolution sometimes is custom and sometimes the Hertz is also custom. So I think if you have a fairly new MacBook, it is a good idea to try to find people to test as soon as possible when you arrive at the venue. And we will try our best to also prepare a speaker ready room in which we will try to have a screen for you there. Even if the screen would not be identical to the one that we have at the projector, it is still approximation of the text. So we really encourage you to use that if we can make that happen. All right. Thanks for a question for the program team. There is one. Yeah, feel free to unmute. Yes. Hi. I'm here as an expert slash mentor, but I see we have someone first time speakers who are workshop conductors. And he mentioned that you will be recording the sessions of talks, but we are not recording workshops and poster sessions, right, just to be clear. Yeah, so we do not record tutorials or as well as sorry, the sun's just coming down. So anyway, ignore that. But yeah, so we do not record tutorials and we do not report posters or talks that are recorded and also the open spaces are not recorded. Sir. Correct. Good point. Right. I think we can move on. But anyway, if you have a question for the program team any time there is you can drop an email to program at your partner and we will do our best to reply to your request. Right. So I think we can move on. So I just want to thank all the mentors who kind of helped us to run this mentorship program. So the mentors, I see that there are a few mentors here in this call. Thanks a lot for your help or your effort to guide first time speakers through one to once through the CFP and all these all the way along, let's say. So thanks for that. This program could have happened without your help. And that's in a way. So and feel free to participate also in today's conversation. Right. So the first guest speaker is Yu Chiro who is sharing with us. Yu Chiro participated last year to the mentorship program. So who and this year is sharing with us his experience and of yes and his feedback from last year. Yu Chiro. Yes. OK. Well, I'll thank you for the welcoming introduction. And nice to meet you. Hello, everyone. I'm Yu Chiro. I attended the last year at your Python conference as a first time speaker. And I also took part in the first time speaker mentorship and this workshop also. And at first I want to strongly say that this first time speakers workshop and mentorship both are so great opportunity for first time speakers like newbies like me. To get involved into community and also, of course, to prepare and improve our personal talks so much. So I want to say that you are now attending the so great opportunity to make your talk so much great. And let me share some of my personal experience last year. And that also may include some hints or advices that might be helpful for you too. Well, actually I drastically changed my talk after I attended this workshop last year and got so much advices from the program teams. For example, I, you know, well, switched the last slide into the former or some like that kind of a storyline stuff. Also, and I also changed all the color scheme of my slides from like, especially the code blocks with dark mode into light mode. Just advice from, probably it was advice from Vivi. And I think one of the biggest issues discussed in this workshop will be live coding or live demo. I think this will be, you know, the future topic too. This workshop too, I discussed it soon, I think. And but to be honest, I was, well, anti-example of this topic. Well, many people suggested, they recommended the first time speakers not to do that. And that advice actually scared me but I actually decided to do live coding at last because my talk was about my always, that makes coding easier. So I thought that live code should have been made easier just by my technology. So it was a great opportunity for me to show that kind of a feature of that project. And I also, of course, prepares two or three backup plans, of course. So, well, let me, let us discuss about this topic later soon. But my message is that you have to think about just avoid live coding at first, but there is some flexibility or some room that you can do if you have enough confidence and reasons and enough backup plans. And at last, well, I also recommend you to talk with the organizers or some mentors from this opportunity, including mentorship program or workshop because not only for your improvement but also to be involved into the community because this is a great opportunity to talk with the people who are already familiar with the community. So, this is a great introduction for like a first-time attendees like us to get familiar with existing community members and it makes us easier to say hello at the first morning of the conference. Well, so yeah, that's it. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to share my short story. Thank you. Thanks, Yuchiro. No, this was very insightful and useful. There is actually, we have a question from Rodrigo. It's not a question. My raising my hand is me requesting to say something. Oh, is it fine? Yeah, yes. I thought that Yuchiro, that's how you say your name. Yuchiro. Yes. I think Yuchiro's story and advice was a great way to start because they said that people usually say first-time speakers shouldn't do live demos and Yuchiro did it anyway. So that's just the thing that's very important for all of you today here is that the things we are going to say and the experiences we are going to share, they don't necessarily apply exactly the same to you. So if it works for me, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. And so I think this is just a great way of starting this workshop, actually. So take note of the tips, but then make sure they work for you. This is a very, very excellent point, Rodrigo. Thanks for sharing that. Yes, you're right. Now, if there is no other point to raise, I would go to invite a second guest here, Sebastian. So I think with the invite, we shared with all of you an article written by Sebastian how to make a great conference talk, which is a very long article. So thanks, Sebastian, for putting all these excellent tips all together from basically on, from why we need to, what are the benefits to speaking in a conference until basically the day of the presentation, the day of the presentation, try to do with the audience and the Q&A. So it covers everything, every aspect. So if you haven't read it yet, I strongly suggest to read it. And I think with Sebastian, we kind of instead of Sebastian talking through kind of these article of repeating the points he made, again, I think we prefer to ask questions to Sebastian, right? So I think, Sebastian, before we go into the question, do you want to share anything with us? First of all, thank you very much for the kind words. I'm really happy that you enjoyed the article. No, as you said, let's have a talk about some points from this article because there was like too much stuff and I don't even know what I should focus on. All right, cool. Yes, let's take this approach. I think one of the questions that I have is, among the key benefits you are mentioning in the pause, there is recognition, networking and kind of the possibility of getting invited in all the conferences because of, yes, you've been recognized, especially if the talks are recorded, then people can watch the recording afterwards and that can be shared with our friends and colleagues and stuff. And as these might be benefits that will come with time, of course, it's not that you start presenting and then all of a sudden, you have a huge network of people recognition but can you identify all the more short-term benefits? So I would say one of the best short-term benefits is that being a speaker is an excellent icebreaker for the conversation because when I was going to my first conferences, unless I went with some people I knew before, it was really hard to talk with strangers because I'm introverts over that, that's not easy. And then when you're a speaker and people see you have a speaker on your barge, they will ask you, hey, what are you going to talk about or what did you talk about? So people will just approach you and ask you about if you're in a circle of people. So that's one thing. And for example, once you finish a talk, you will always, I always have some people who will come and ask you questions afterwards. Do you know that you have more people who are interested in your topic and you can just hang out with them and like discuss what was the topic of your presentation. So you have someone to talk about at least one thing that interests both of you, which is like your presentation. So I would say that that's for me one of the really nice benefits. Like maybe in terms of like more altruistic benefits, I would say this is also like a way of you to giving back to the community. Cause for example, for me working after hours on open source software, this just never worked for me. So I kind of treat my talks as like a way of contributing to the Python community. So like think of it like, if it wasn't for all of you who are here and who are giving talks, this conference wouldn't be taking place. So I think you should feel good about all the hard work that you're putting into your presentation and that's something that you can be proud of. Yeah, not very good point. Yeah, Kion, Kion. Yeah, I mean, those are two main things that comes to my mind. No, that's great, that's great. I think if I kind of add to another very, very short-term benefits is the feeling that you have once, as soon as you finish your presentation, it's like, I did it. So it's that good feeling that basically all the effort that you put in the presentation, it paid off, right? And say, okay, this is not the end there. It's the start of a journey, right? So that actually will bring you more kind of recognition at working all the things, all the long-term benefits that you just said. It is a fascinating feeling, yeah, I love it. Elena, yes, Kion? Can I just say one thing? I remember by now I was the first time speaker and people from my community did their first talks. During that networking session after the talk when people come and ask your questions, you're actually getting so many ideas of future talks and you're so encouraged to continue to contribute to the community to apply for the future conferences. So I think, yeah, motivation to keep going with the talks. It's also the thing that is happening to mostly everyone after their first talk. Yes, very true. Thanks a lot for sharing that. Let's go, I have a list of other questions. So, Sebastian, while you are the banking meets or not submitting a conference, you are mentioning the stress that one speaker might have. Do you have any specific tricks or advice about having less stress during the talk? And this is the whole topic for everyone. It is, yeah, this is a very good question and I'm afraid I do not have like a magic trick for the stress, like, sorry, sorry guys. I was like, at the beginning when I was presenting some years ago, I was like looking for some tips to manage stress and there are like some articles that you can find online about like, I don't know. One was about like washing your forearms with cold water to like calm you down or like probably some breathing exercise. So maybe you can like Google that and try it. But for example, what works for me on the day of the conference, because like initially when I was first speaking, I was like getting stressed since the morning. So I couldn't eat breakfast because I was getting stressed since I woke up. So what works for me was like trying to keep my mind distracted until my presentation comes. So I usually like try to hang out with people and like talk with them about something and that takes my attention away from the fact that I will have to be giving a presentation and that way I'm like more relaxed throughout the day. And I also noticed like using your phone to distract yourself doesn't really work that way because then you start thinking and then you think about your talk. So it really has to be people. And if you like don't know anyone, you can for example, go to the place where there are the sponsor books and like you can talk with people there. People will be like super happy to talk with you and it's not even about like hiring. They have like engineers there so you can talk about whatever. So that's one way to get you distracted until the time of your presentation. But in terms of like getting stressed during your talk, this I haven't figured out yet. And I mean, this is because for example, the first presentation I was ever giving like my legs were literally shaking and that I had to hold the podium to like just not lose my balance. So that was interesting feeling, I would say. And I think one advice here I would have is to like try to maybe have a more, if you're using speaker notes, try to have like a detailed speaker notes because like if you get like completely stressed and you blank out worst case, you can like fall back to reading your speaker notes. And I mean, it won't be the most entertaining talk because it will feel like a lecture but at least you will deliver it. I mean, you are putting so much effort into preparing your talk. So it would be a pity if you like blank out and you forget some talking points. So if you're worried that you will get stressed and forget things, just write things down. And you don't have to use those speaker notes but just like have them a bit more detailed as your backup plan. And one more thing, for example, when you're there on the stage and you get stressed, you might not notice that but you start speaking fast. Like now I'm speaking faster than I usually speak. And I think like one of the key things here is to actually realize that you start speaking fast because for you, you already know the content of your presentation like the back of your hand. Like you rehearse it like 10, 15 times. So for you, this is nothing new and you're kind of like spewing words just to try to go through a presentation. But if you have like a lot of new concepts and you're tossing it out, your audience, they kind of need time to digest it. So just like pay attention to your pace and like try to slow down, try to like take a sip of water, try to like have a deep breath or something like that. Like I mean, it's perfectly fine to have long pauses during your presentation. Like people won't notice if you like blank out and you have to like think about something people are perfectly fine with that. This is not something that people will notice and be uncomfortable with. And oh, one last thing. So like in general to deal with, to learn how to deal with stress better, you just have to talk more in front of the audience. That's kind of obvious. But like some different kind of people get stressed in front of different audiences. So for example, for me, I'm perfectly fine talking with in front of my team or talking at work or people that I know that that is not a problem. But if I have to speak in front of strangers that stress me out. And some people are like completely opposite. They can like go in front of 1,000 people and just like one, why the fantastic presentation they don't get stressed but when they have to present something at work that's when their gaze gets stressed. So just be aware of that. Cause if you're like practicing your talk in front of your colleagues at work, everything is fine. But then you stand in front of strangers, you get stressed. So maybe like try to go to some local meetup or something like that just to have a feeling of how it is speaking in front of the audience that you don't know. Yeah, that's it from my side. And thanks about, no, these are very valid points. And actually this is the very line with what Rodrigo said earlier. I mean, there is no magic trick of that was for everyone. So you need to find out your own tricks to kind of lower the stress before the presentation. And what it worked for you might not work for the people. So I think it's kind of a trial and error thing. So try your first presentation and the second one, the third one that would go better and better and better. But I think what I want to add, I think the stress of delivering a presentation will never go away in my opinion because even talking with very experienced people who deliver keynotes and to a larger audience, people get stressed. That's it. This is normal, it's part of the game. So I don't think the goal here is not to be stressed but is to manage the stress in a way that you can deliver a good presentation. So I think that's a point I wanted to make. Valerie raised the hand, so please communicate yourself. Yeah, hello everyone. So I have a few tips because I get stressed a lot when I'm gonna present on a conference. And one is definitely related to what Sebastian said and it's to try to practice before, right? And you can practice in many different ways. One could be giving the talk like for yourself, like just you're alone in a room and you just go into the full presentation you present on your screen and just start talking, like you are in the front of the audience. Another way is to actually record it. So you can after check it out and sometimes we can also kind of improve some details. And then it's also very, very useful to give the talk into a meetup. So if you can propose your talk to the local meetup or to the closest meetup that you have or sometimes online also works then you can also practice there. And sometimes in my case, I give the talk in a meetup and I get also feedback from the people. So that's very, very helpful also. And the other tip is that it happened to me actually in a Python that I went to the prepare room, to the preparation room for the speakers but like really close to the time when I was going to speak. So when I arrived, there was a little bit of like a mess like everybody was rushing. So we had to run like literally run to the salon because it was really, really far away in the convention center. So we ran to the place where I had to give the talk and that stressed me a lot more. So what I learned from that was to arrive early to the preparation room and to have everything ready like early. So I could go peacefully to the presentation place and be more calm and that's it. Yes, exactly. Yeah, very good point because actually when you run you are out of breath. So you are doing this and then if you have the stress on top of it it's not a very nice combination I would say. Thanks Valery for sharing your tips. Yes, Kalyan? Yeah, hi. So I think Sebastian and Valery has pretty much covered a majority of the stress points I believe because those are major key points in terms of handling stress during the conference or the talk. Couple of points which I personally keep a tab on things in order to relieve stress is like first one is I basically visualize success. So to put it in a simpler what I used to do is I visualize myself that I have delivered a very successful talk and I got a very positive responses. So that thing will really help me to get out of the stress and it also personally boosts my self-confidence and self-assurance. So that's how one I personally follow and that's so far helped me in terms of avoiding stress during the talk. And again, and other thing which I also follow is like I put up some backup plans because while giving your presentations so definitely you'll encounter a lot of technical glitches or interruptions during your talk. So it's always, you should be stay flexible to adapting such things in order to avoid stress. So it's always like, you're good to keep a backup plan or alternative approaches in mind so that you can easily manage and you can deliver your talk successfully without taking too much stress on such circumstances. So these are some of the points which I like to share. Thanks, Harjit. Yes, very excellent point. Thanks for sharing with us. Right, so let's move on to the next question. So, Sebastian, many people say that in order to make an effective talk you need to engage with the audience. But would these be possible if you create a script kind of a detailed script for the presentation? Are you sure about that in your post? That's a good question. I would say yes, because you can ask audience questions and you can put the questions in your script. I mean, you don't necessarily have to go by the script. I mean, you can have it more detail, less detail, but I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to have some interaction with the audience if you were using a script. You can ask questions, you can do raise of hands show and so on. So everything that you can do if you're like improvising without speaker notes you can perfectly fine do with a script except that if you have a script you will actually remember to do those things. So yeah, I see the point that it feels a bit less natural if people go by the script. But I don't buy this argument because you don't have to write your script in like a formal way. You can write your script the way you're speaking and or you can like have it written in a formal way and speak it less formally. I would say no, it's not like if you have a script and you just focus on your script and you don't interact with the audience. Yeah, no, I agree with you. Also, actually I have a kind of a counterpoint on the engaging with the audience. I would say, I mean, it's like everything in life where you learn a new thing you cannot master that thing straight away, right? So the maybe the engagement with the audience will come with time. As soon as you get more experience in talking and you feel more confident that you can start introducing the engagement with the audience but maybe for the first times or for the first times that you talk to in a kind of in a conference or probably speaking just focus on the delivery presentation. Just get confident on what are your abilities how you deliver the presentation? What are your limits? Get know yourself in a context where you are under stress because then if you try to overdo then it might not be kind of there might not have the same effect, right? So it's like then actually could be counterproductive for your presentation. So I think this is my point trying to understand your limits before going a step forward. And we have two hands raised. I didn't know, I don't know who raised first. So Sebastian. Oh, okay, yes. So I think there's a bit of a middle ground between crowd interaction and keeping to your script. It's something that I learned in a lot of the speaker trainings that I followed is you can ask your audience questions without actually expecting them to answer. There are these kinds of questions that 90%, 95% of the audience will say yes to but they will engage them again into your conversation. So if you're making a point of if you have or if you have an opinion you can state something like a question that you know nearly everyone in the audience will agree to or maybe everyone will disagree with. Doesn't really matter, but that just reactivates that audience. And I agree with Diego that when you're just starting out when your presentation and you're really focused on your presentation itself you might not have the cognitive capacity or management skills to really manage the audience. I get really stressed from interacting with the audience because then things suddenly go off plan. So I tend to not do it. But yeah, you can definitely ask questions without actually expecting people to answer them and then they can just be part of your script but they will make them think and reactivate again. Thanks, Sebastian. Yes, very good points and Rodrigo. They say great minds think alike, right? Because I was also going to say that you can just ask questions which you already know the answer. And another thing you can do is you can make jokes, right? And it doesn't matter if they're bad jokes. I mean, the audience will notice but I always make bad jokes and people just laugh out of pity and it works well. So you can do that sort of thing. It's going to be just fine and you can either wing it if you have that type of humor in you or you can script your jokes. But don't make them sound fake. So if you script your jokes, just practice that they sound natural otherwise it's going to be people will notice. But yeah. Yeah, thanks, Rodrigo, for your points. Is that anyone else who wants to? Yes, Karion, Elena? Yeah, maybe about the engagement. Actually, when I'm preparing my talk I kind of feel like all the engagement is actually scripted because I feel more comfortable like this. For first-time speakers, I would aim for the most easy things like small warm-up activity in the beginning of the talk, just like small question. What is like your level of familiarity with this topic? How did you travel to this conference? Is it your first time at EuroPython or something like that? Also, I would suggest not to forget about eye contact. A lot of people are not comfortable with eye contact and I believe it's part of the engagement, actually. So don't forget about it. Pick people that you know or that you are comfortable to look at in different places of the audience and try to look to the left, to the right, from time to time, someone in front of you. This will help you a lot. Have friends in the audience if possible. It's always the best. Works great for me every time. About jokes and memes. I would be a little bit cautious here. I know it's like maybe we have different opinions on that. Just test it out. Be sure that it's not offensive. People understand the joke because I heard a lot of different types of jokes. Just test it out. Believe me, you want to test it out before. And yeah, if you did this minimum thing, I think your first time speaker experience in terms of engagement would be quite great. Pretty much it. Thanks, Elena. Yes, very good points. Also a very good point about the jokes. So yes, jokes are, I would be edged. Specifically, the same joke can be perceived differently from different people. So I think, yes, very good suggestion of testing the joke out and see that it's kind of acceptable for the whole audience. Right, I guess we can, so time is passing by. So I just want to get to the next two questions. Sebastian, so is it obvious that this post, the post that you created is as being written after a long experience in giving kind of talks, conference talks, have you tried to do things the opposite way in the past years? So do you remember any occasions where you tried things and they're going well? So I'm afraid I'm gonna disappoint you here because I haven't, but I am very curious if other speakers tried something and that failed miserably. So I'm looking for some other experience. But public speaking generally works the same. You go on the stage, you're there to pass the message. Like some people do this in a more entertaining way, so that's more funny. But as long as you spend a lot of time on the research and you convey your message to the audience, somehow people will learn something and that will be a successful talk. So I wouldn't say that I tried different things and they failed, but I usually try to pay attention to what I want to improve in my talk. So I look at the people that I admire and I'm looking at things that I can improve. So for example, right now I know that I want to improve the design of my slides and for example, the storytelling because like some people have started like a really nice story. I usually don't. So yeah, I kept like some goals for my future presentations but yeah, I'm curious if others have like things that they tried and they failed. Anyone? Yes, Sebastian, the other Sebastian. Yeah, I definitely tried some things that failed horribly. So one thing that failed for me was writing out my entire text and trying to learn it by heart and then trying to just deliver that text. Just makes me very nervous. I start stumbling over my words. I start restarting sentences all the time just lose my train of thought. So that didn't really work for me. I tried it twice. I do write out my text partially beforehand. I just make drafts to clear my thoughts to get a nice story going. But I don't learn that text. I hope to know my story by the time I do my presentation. I'd probably go over it a million times when I'm out walking or just sitting on the couch or cycling or whatever. So that didn't work for me but I know that there are people who really like that who can deliver a TED-like talk when they do have their text written out. So it's very personal. So find out what works for you. But it made me very stressed and I basically gave a very bad talk because of it. So, yeah. Right, thanks, Sebastian, for sharing your experience. Let's go, we're conscious of about the time. Let's go for the last question, Sebastian. So your policies is very detailed, right? So as I said at the beginning, it covers everything. So there are so many details and so many important things to understand, to digest in order to deliver a talk. But if you have to pick three things or advices from the post, as advice to someone who needs to deliver the first talk, which are those three things? Only three things. I think one of the most important thing is that people can either listen to you or read your slides. And that's kind of obvious, but the cool thing is that you can control that. So that it doesn't mean that like wall of text is always a bad thing. It means that, well, but wall of text is usually a bad thing. But let's say you have a quote from someone and you know that this quote is coming. So you just display the slide and give people a moment to read it. You can have a sip of water and so on. So by changing the amount of text you have on your slide, you also change the pace of representation. You can have like one word on the slide and you can have a quote and you can have a bit of code and you can have a picture and so on. So try to modulate the amount of text that you have on your slide, but just make sure like when you switch to a new slide with a lot of text, people will not listen to you for a couple of seconds. So just keep that in mind. That would be one thing. Second of all, figure out what's the purpose of your talk. Cause if you want to like teach people something, your talk will look slightly different versus when you want to like show them something. Cause if you want to teach them something, you need to like repeat your key points more often. So you will have an agenda where you will say, okay, this is what I will talk about. Then you will talk about, then you will summarize things. So you want those things to stick with people and get stuck in their head. But for example, if you want to show them something then and make them curious in something, then you probably want to do a bit more demos and so on. So like think in advance, what's the message and what's the outcome you want to get from your presentation. A little bit second thing. And yeah, I want to get back to the live demos. There was already a lot of great things said about live demos starting from Yuchiro's experience when he was a bit afraid and he did the demo and it went well. We also had some advice from other people. So yeah, ask yourself if you really want to have a demo. And I see that some people misunderstood that part of my article, like they thought I mean, like you should not do live demo. No, I mean, there are some situations where live demo is perfect. Like, and some people make like really nice, really entertaining live demo. So if you want to do that, sure. But like you can present some ideas with screenshots. You can maybe like record a short video of what's happening. And at the same time, you can like explain, okay, here we're doing this, here we're doing that and so on. Like if you're doing live demo, when you're coding, you usually can't talk unless you want to do a lot of typos. So like there are some better ways if you want to like show the demo of your project and so on. And if you really want to have a live demo, like have some backup plan, have like some code on a piece of paper, have like separate branches in the GitLab repo where you can switch and so on. Yeah. And of course, like remember to increase the font size everywhere because I see like people having like a nice big font on the slides, then they switch to demo. It's like tiny font and no one bothers to tell them. So like 10 minutes goes only like first two rows can actually read something. The rest of the people are like sitting on their phones. So just prepare for the live demo. Yeah, very good points. Thanks for raising that. So you said having a balanced presentation between text and images and codes and stuff. Second is the purpose of, understanding what the purpose of the presentation is, if it's teaching or is making people curious about a specific topic. And the third one is all about live demos. So very good points. Right, so thanks Sebastian for, first of all for the blog posts that you wrote. Again, it's full of details. And I bet even experienced speakers can learn from a lot from it, is a very well written. Thanks for that. Also, thanks for spending the time with us today. So I think we can go to the next part. So which kind of involves all the experienced speakers. So feel free to pitch in and answer a few questions that I have. So I think the first question I have is kind of, which is kind of the base of everything is how to design an effective talk. So does anyone want to share suggestions? Yeah, can I drop something? Can I? Correct. I think one of the, so if by effective talk, you mean a talk where you put your point across and people understand what you mean, then something that's very important is to not try and cram too much information into your talk. Because if you rehearse it twice, 10 times, 15 times, you'll know everything you want to say, everything will be easy and obvious, but the people in the audience are hearing your talk for the first time. So often less is more. Yeah, thanks, thanks Rodrigo. Is anyone else wants to? Well, can I say something? Yes, of course. And I think many of you already know that, already know that, you know, well, your knowledge is so valuable, important. But I also want to say that the introduction of your talk is also so much important because audiences want to know why your talk is important for them. So introducing from starting with some introduction of like a real world, real world problem that audience might encounter or something like that would be a good point, you know, good point to start with. That's it. Oh, thanks, thanks for what you two did. Yeah, I think I have one, one thing to add. It's kind of like seminar to Rodrigo and it's that don't try to put too many take home messages in your talk. Your audience is not going to remember five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 take home messages. It goes back to thinking about the goal of the presentation is it to learn something, maybe to showcase something and then think about what is really the one, what are the two take home messages that I really want the audience to remember and repeat them. So typically what they say and my differ for you is that you kind of introduced them at the start and you explain them then they come across in your entire presentation, but near the end you repeat them. And then by then they should have heard them three, four, five times, maybe in different wordings but the repetition will legitimize your message but they will also make sure that they remember it. They're not going to remember eight things but one or two things that's really feasible. And then obviously that they'll remember bits and pieces of other stuff. But think about what is the most important but are the two most important things that I want to tell my audience and really focus on that, deliver those points. Yeah, thanks, Sebastian. Before going to the next question, I actually have just realized that I skipped a very important bit in the agenda which is actually questions from our first time speakers. So if there is any question for Sebastian or for the experienced speakers, I think this is your time to ask any question for us. So I encourage you to raise your hand, unmute yourself and ask away. And while you're thinking, there was a question in the chat where it was said, are we allowed to use ideas like PyCharm, for example, in the context of product brand placements? So I think that the answer is, so long as your talk is not about only the IDE or the software stack and it doesn't deviate from your actual topic, it should be okay. So there are no problems about that. Any question from the first time speaker? Don't be shy. We are friendly people. You know what, I can share this with you. So I mean, like everyone, I'm very kind of introvert and also I feel stressed when talking in front of people. Actually, asking question is one of the way to break a little bit the high system because the asking question is not that you need to deliver a presentation but it's a way to, okay, I need to speak in front of people. So asking question could be a way to kind of ease out to deliver a presentation. So you can use this occasion to ask your question. I didn't convince you anyway, but that's fine. So I guess we can continue. We can continue, have other questions or other points to raise with our experienced speakers. But at any time raise your hand and ask away the question for us. So I think the next point is what are the designs considerations while preparing the slides? So I think Sebastian already raised a point of this, not put too much text on slides and have a balanced presentation. But if there are any other tips from anyone please share away. Increase the font size, just increase it. You can increase it, you should increase it. Make it big and if the text doesn't fit it's because it's too much text, usually. Alena? And after you increase your font size, ask your audience if they still can see it because maybe they still cannot see it and increase it more. Yeah, totally. My suggestion is also connected to the, please don't try not to make busy slides with a lot of text, try to follow the rule. One slide, one thought. You need to understand what you are trying to communicate with this exact slide and it should be like simple and visible straight away. Design wise, try to aim for clean, simple slides. Maybe white canvas, black text. If you are not the design guru who can design like amazing slide deck, just keep it simple, I think it will be totally fine. And yeah, some memes and pictures usually work but try to attribute it, put the source of it there and make it super high quality if you're adding like any pictures, GIFs or something like that. Yes, another point is not just the font size but also use high contrast colors. So it's white background, the black fonts for instance, try not to use colors that are very similar. Be mindful also of colorblind people. So if the color is key or delivering your message, then use colors that colorblind people can understand. So these are kind of points about colors and contrast. So maybe, yeah. So just to add one more thing on top of what you just said, even if you don't have colorblind people, some projectors are just terrible and the colors will be completely off. So if you have, yeah, don't rely on like small color differences to convey important message. Yes, things are not. Teets. Yeah, I don't know how visible the screens are in all the rooms. I've been in rooms where the bottom of the screen wasn't visible because it was a flat room. Everyone's, it's the people at the back can't see the bottom of the screen. So if that happens, you're a Python, I guess it might, it's worth using the bottom of your screen to put your contact details and try not to go all the way to the bottom. That goes with the big fonts and not too many stuff on there, I think as well. And to go with that, it's worth having your contact details on your slides, just your Twitter and email or whatever, because people will photo your slides to contact you later. Yes, very good point, James, yes. Yes, I've seen presentation where basically, yeah, the borders of the whole presentation were off the screens or actually try not to use any border, I would say, keep the presentation centered in the slides, yes. Yeah, I had to do that last year. I was like on U.S. I think the bottom 10% of my slides were not visible or something. So I was so go to the room like Tony said, and I just quickly added all my slides to be slightly higher, but it was, yeah, you just couldn't see them after the first row or so. So be really mindful of that and visit the room before your talk. If you're able, if you're not on the first day, first round, go there and just have a feel for it. Sebastian, you have your hand raised? You always have. Yes, I figure out how to do this. So one more piece of advice is that you can skip unnecessary code. So if you have a code example and the user has to be logged in, you don't write like post request here, set cookies here, blah, blah, blah, you just write a function log in user and people will understand what it works. So unless you're like trying to explain how to log in the user, you just replace all the unnecessary code with like a nice function names and your code will shrink to the actual important parts. Yes, very good point, yes. Right. I'm not trying to encourage first-time speaker to ask questions. Let's see if there is any break person. There is a question in the chat. I'm not sure if this helps to the right place to ask, but could you tell me when the order of the talks would be decided? I think this is more a question for the program team. And yes, I guess the question is about the schedule. So the short answer is soon, probably in one or two weeks tops. We have something that looks like a first draft of the schedule. We'll need to make adjustments to it and so on, but it will be published as soon as we can. All right, thanks a lot. Why are we here? Is there any question that I missed in the chat because of I'm not monitoring activity or the chat? If there is, just let me know so I can repeat it. Okay, it looks like there isn't. So I think I have another question. So I think we talk about briefly about engaging with the audience. There were a couple of tips on how to engage, but I just want to see if there are any more tips about these engagement with the audience from anyone. I can go, if no one else wants. I don't have anything very groundbreaking because I'm not really good at engaging with audience, but I noticed that there are different levels of how we can engage with the audience. So show of hands is the easiest thing. You can like, hey, who's first time at Euro Python or who used this library and so on. I'm like, raising hand is easy. Asking questions is tricky. Like some people might not their hand. Some people won't. Sebastian said like, some people will like, just acknowledge the question inside of them and not express it visually or anything. And then there are jokes as Rodrigo said, like they are often hit and miss. So it's a tricky thing. So I would say like, try with the easy thing if you feel uncomfortable, like, because when you're engaging with audience you should also be aware that sometimes there will be like no feedback from the audience, especially if it's like after land and everyone is sleepy. So just be kind of comfortable with like, not getting any answer from the audience and just move on. Yes, yes. Alena. Yeah, but also be prepared that people can actually start answering you back a lot and you also need to be prepared and control it if you like, if people really, really wanna share. So you need to be prepared to move this to after the talk part. Also one tip that I did and it is super easy and I think it can work for first time speakers also. I brought some special swag with me, just I had it with me on the stage and I wanted to encourage people to ask questions after the talk. And I said, hey, I have actually this special swag with me and the best questions will get this swag from me and this is what I did to encourage people to talk to me about the topic more because I love it. So if you like it, you can also use it maybe for your talk. Thanks a lot, Alena. He has very good, very good suggestion about this walk. Rodrigo. So, okay, so Brian being the audience. Now, but I had one thing that actually is related to Sebastian's question in the chat. So Diego, then you can check the chat. One time I was actually watching a talk by Sebastian Witowski or Witowski, sorry. And I actually liked how Sebastian handled a Q&A interaction. So there was this one individual last year that was not really asking questions, more trying to criticize the slides. And I'm not debating whether the criticism was valid or accurate, but the way Sebastian handled it, I think was really great. Maybe Sebastian, do you want to tell us how you handle that kind of thing? Okay, yeah. So I'm having a great strike of my conference talks because if you asked me last year how is conference speaking going, I would say flawless. Since last year I had like this one guy with a comment and not a question. I also had like projector dying in the middle of my presentation. So now I'm getting the full package. So regarding these difficult questions, there are like different ways how you can handle those kind of people. Like the easiest thing is to try to tell to that person that, hey, we can like discuss it after the talk because like there are like hundreds of people in the room you don't want to waste their time on one-on-one. But with this guy, he was asking a question about some piece of code that was kind of like a pseudo code for showing a concept. So I didn't really think it through and he was saying, oh, there is some problem with that. And I kind of acknowledged that. And then he said, and if we go to the slide, blah, blah, blah, and at this point I got kind of annoyed at this guy. So I asked, is there a question coming? And he said, no, and just went away. So it was a bit rough, but I was also a bit annoyed. And of course I was stressed. So there are like better ways to handle it, but you should kind of aim into like getting the questions that are useful to the wider audience, not like one-on-one code reviews on stage during Euro Python or whatever happens. Yeah, the main takeaway for me watching the interaction was exactly that just ask people to talk to you later. If you think it's not relevant or not worthy for everyone else listening, just say, hey, maybe we can discuss this further after, yeah. Yes, all right. I think it's a wise suggestion. And I think this is very related to the question that Sebastian asked in the chat. How do we answer questions with the Q and A? There are not actually questions about criticism or arguments, I guess, point you made, I think. Yeah, I mean, if anyone else has a suggestion on these, I would say, anyway, not think about the argument, but I'll say, okay, I take your point. If you want, you can find me after the presentation, we can discuss this further, I think, is the best way. It's not to engage in the argument because, as Rodrigo said, you don't want to waste time of all the people for the one-to-one discussion. I wanted to share something, but I don't remember what, because this question came along. Is there any other question in the chat? Yeah, I think you're missing the fact that me and... Hang on. Rodrigo, go. You're the first. No, no, no, no, go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to add that no matter what happens at the Q and A, it happens to be that people are criticizing you, or sometimes people can even be borderline rude. This happens, unfortunately. Sometimes don't be rude back. Just remember being nice. This is your personal brand. This is your face. Just politely move all this conversation after the talk, concluded, and stay nice. This is an excellent point, yes. Yes, I totally agree with it. Actually, Rodrigo, yes, go next. No, I think what I had to add was already set, so no worries, Diego, thank you. Okay, the thing I wanted to share early was about the engagement with the audience. I remember, it was some, some Euro-Python I got, I don't remember which one. Actually, there was the top of the engagement with the audience, because there was this person. I don't even remember what the was about, but this person wrote as a kind of a web service. And invited all the audience to go on the website and to vote in real time. And then during the presentation, actually the votes were kind of updating real time. And this was driving the whole presentation. So again, this is kind of the top of the engagement whilst delivering a presentation. But I would say, as a first-time speaker, don't do something like this, because if something goes wrong, then you are kind of in a, so you need to be prepared in recovering if something goes wrong in that specific case, because this is kind of a mix with a demo and engaging with the audience, because you have a web service running somewhere, so the network can go down, the service can die, so you don't have time there to debug things, right? So you need to be 100% sure that you have an exit route from any program that you might have. So this is, again, at the top of the engagement, but the same message applies, having an escape route, whatever things you do. Sebastian? Just one thing regarding the questions from audience, because I think we are sharing too many scaring stories. And the thing is that just, and we have first-time speakers, just not to discourage it, this happens rarely that someone asks those difficult questions and so on, so most of the people know how to behave, so that's one thing. Second of all, if you have like a stupid or rude question, most of the people on the audience are there with you and they realize this is a bad question and that puts the people asking the question in their bad life, not you, so they sympathize with you. And last but not least, if you're like scared of those kind of questions, you can always say that you don't want to have the Q&A session. You will say, okay, just come talk with me after the talk, I will be around, but I won't be taking questions. And I see a lot of people do that, like even experienced people, because they just feel like you don't have to take the questions, just tell the chair in advance. Yes, this is a very point. I don't know if we mentioned at the very beginning, but yes, so you can say to the chair of the session that you don't take any Q&A, and that's it. And you're fine with it. Yes, there are a couple of raised hands. I missed who raised first? Junior, I hope I say your name, okay. Hi, thank you, hi, I'm Junior. It's not a question. I apologize for my broken English. Thank you for this very valuable session. I'm attending EuroPython all by myself from Japan. I currently don't have any friends in Prague. Of course, I'm looking forward to talk session, but I even more excited about the opportunity to meet all of you in person. If you see around in Prague, please feel free to say hello or even reach me on social media platform like Twitter. Thanks, Junior. This is the good thing about the in-person conferences that actually we can hang out after the conference, having a chat, making new friends. I really look forward to being in Prague and I'm sure you will find new people, new friends. You will make new friends. So this will be the least of your problems to find new people there. Yeah, thank you. I'm excited, so excited. You won't be alone these three days. This is for sure. Yeah. Kalyan? Yeah, so I have a piece of advice here in terms of answering questions. So let's say you always should be honest and transparent if something you're really not aware of that particular question or something. So if you don't have any immediate answer to the particular question, so be honest and acknowledge straight away saying that the question is like interesting or challenging, but you can express your willingness to follow up more information on that later. And so that shows the audience that you have the humility and the commitment to provide more accurate information in the future. So always be transparent and honest if something you really don't know, feel free to acknowledge it straight away. So there is no harm in doing that. Yes, Kalyan, this is a very good suggestion. Thanks for sharing that. I guess we are a little bit over time that we plan to. I think we can wrap it up here. So thanks for all the volunteers, all the mentors who helped us running this mentorship program. Thanks, Yuchiro, even if he already left the call. And thanks, Sebastian, for your time, for the blog, for answering our questions. So I think, I hope it was a useful session for all the first-time speaker and I hope you can take away suggestion on how to kind of deliver a good presentation. So I think, yes, I think the last thing, the last thing I would say good luck in preparing your presentations and I guess see you in Prague. And last thing, the finalists, yes, go on. Thanks to all the volunteers and thanks to all the mentors because this year we had many mentees and when we asked them if they could we get one mentee, one more mentee, they were all very, very helpful. And for everyone that wants help during the conference, we will be there like so for free to ask questions to the volunteers, to the binding desk, whatever. And I'm sure that some experienced speaker or someone with experience in talks the day they will help you. And always have in mind that there is also the session host who have the speaker in the room and everything. That's it, thank you Diego for hosting. My pleasure. Alena, do you want to? Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to mention that as I am from Prague and I'm super, super excited right now, I'm in Nuremberg, but I'm from Prague. We are super waiting for all of you in Prague. So if you have any questions or you're too stressed out before your talk, reach out, I will help you with stress management before the talk, feel free to. That's great, thanks Alena for your help. All right, I think we can close you here. So thanks everyone for attending. The recordings will be made available at some point on YouTube. So you can rewatch things or part of the recording. So if you want to go through a couple of concepts and that's it, thanks a lot for the all the volunteers organising your Python. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. So in Prague, bye everyone. Bye-bye. You.