Speaker Resources

Information for Speakers

  • Please be in your presentation room at least 15 minutes before your talk to meet your session chair.
  • A Quiet Room will be available for attendees and speakers on all conference days.

Need some help with your presentation?

Presenters, regardless of experience, sometimes want a little help. If you’d like any help in preparing or presenting your talk, some awesome members of our community have volunteered to be speaker mentors. A mentor is an experienced presenter who has volunteered to help other presenters. For first-time presenters, non-native English speakers, under-confident or uncertain speakers, or anyone who would just appreciate another set of eyes, our mentors will be here to help. You’ll get the best results by forming a relationship with one mentor, rather than contacting several.

  • Katie McLaughlin, Developer Advocate and frequent public speaker (occasional keynoter), DjangoCon AU organiser, and Secretary for the Django Software Foundation.

Slide Guidelines

  • Use Keynote, PowerPoint, LibreOffice, or Google Slides for your slides.
  • Minimal slides are best—-avoid walls of text and long lists of bullets.
  • Aim for high contrast slides, avoiding colors that may be difficult to see for those with colorblindness. (You can check your contrast online; you just need the hex codes for your colors!)
  • Light background with dark text is easiest to read; be mindful that the projection screen is white.
  • Make text as large as possible, at least 68pt.
  • Choose fonts with adequate spacing between letters, and avoid thin or cursive fonts.
  • Leave the bottom ⅓ of your slides free of text to ensure nothing is obscured.
  • If your talk requires live coding or using the terminal, make sure your editor or terminal settings are legible. Dark text on a light background (high contrast) with a large font is best.
  • Avoid or limit flashing videos or animated gifs, as these may have negative effects for people with seizure disorders, migraines, or ADD/ADHD.
  • Images, memes, and GIFs should be appropriate for a professional audience.
  • Your talk should lose nothing if the slides aren’t visible. Generally describe graphs, images, and other information for the audience.
  • Consider including your Twitter handle on your opening and closing slides!
  • Consider publishing your slides after your talk (on the platform of your choice) and tweeting the link with the #djangocon hashtag.

Thanks to AlterConf for their amazing speaking recommendations!