Technical Speaker Training - Free

There are a lot of tech events in Ireland and Northern Ireland right now getting organized (OSS Barcamp, DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper Belfast, etc.), and not surprisingly, we’re seeing a serious dearth of female speakers.  After talking with several women as to why this is, there was a very popular belief that it may have to do with training/experience.  Women who haven’t spoken before may be shy to try it for the first time, and technical people in general aren’t often trained to speak publicly.  In fact, for both men and women, public speaking rates quite high on many people’s list of fears!

So we put together some short, evening sessions to help those who have something to say.  By technical women, for technical women.

The schedule is as follows.  Each session is 1.5 hours and involves a very small group (max capacity ten), including hands-on practice and take-home exercises.  We have three sessions scheduled with a fourth in the diary for either a session repeat or special requests (slide-building, for example).  The sessions are for women only, and we’ll keep them very small (under ten) to allow adequate feedback for people.

Sessions will take place at the echolibre offices at 24 South William Street in Dublin city centre on Thursdays from 6pm - 7:30pm.

Speaker Night 1:               Thursday, February 26th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: What Am *I* Supposed to Talk About?

o   Finding your voice

o   Coming up with topics/content/titles

o   Building a story from your content

 

Speaker Night 2:               Thursday, March 5th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: The Nitty Gritty of Technical Talks

o   Demo-ing with code

o   Useful tools for technical demos/presentations

o   Things everyone hates

o   Failure recovery

o   Your failsafe list

 

Speaker Night 3:               Thursday, March 12th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: Grooving and Improving

o   Handling Q&A

o   Techniques for self-improvment

o   Critiquing your own performance

o   Finding your honest feedback crowd

 

Speaker Night 4:               Thursday, March 19th from 6pm-7:30pm

                Topic: TBD – we’ll either repeat a session or do a special request like slide-building?

 

To register, just put your name in the comments section next to which session you’ll be attending (or say all if you want to attend all three).  Please only register if you’re sure you’ll be attending, as we have very limited space.  If they fill up, we will repeat sessions.

 

If you have comments or feedback about the training or there are additional topics you’d like covered, please e-mail me at martharo [at] microsoft.com.

February 20, 2009 | Filed Under training 

Comments

15 Responses to “Technical Speaker Training - Free”

  1. andrea on February 20th, 2009 6:53 pm

    Hi. I ll be there of course, at least for the first two.
    cheers

    Andrea

  2. Michelle Gallen on February 20th, 2009 7:05 pm

    The speaker training sessions look like a great idea. I’m not very techie - I’m a content geek. I’ve never been very shy of speaking in public - but don’t know how anyone gets invited to do this. Guess you need to be across everything that’s happening and sticking your hand in the air ;)

  3. martha on February 20th, 2009 7:08 pm

    Michelle if you want to run with them for Belfast that would be great! E-mail me at martharo [at] microsoft.com and I can share content with you if you want & discuss further. You’re welcome to come down here as well if you want to help out here in Dublin!

    –Martha

  4. Jaime Hemmett on February 20th, 2009 8:03 pm

    I am very interested in these sessions. I can not make it to the first as I’ll be at a PHP Conference in London.

    If there are any slides or homework from session 1 I’d love to do that all in my free time too!

    I can attend Number 2 and Number 3 and Number 4 if it happens

  5. taghreed on February 20th, 2009 8:15 pm

    Hi

    i would like to attend them all, but due to the timing, am only able to attend the first one.

    any way, am in for the first one :)

  6. Michelle Gallen on February 22nd, 2009 5:47 pm

    Hey Martha,

    March is not good timing for me…we’re having an official site launch for http://www.talkirish.com and we have lots of new games and apps to put live. Could do something about it in the future, if you think there’s the interest?

    Thanks!

  7. Julie Pichon on February 24th, 2009 10:04 am

    I’d like to attend all sessions. Thank you!

  8. Rachel Earley on February 24th, 2009 12:45 pm

    Hi, I’d love to attend thanks!

  9. Alexia Golez on February 24th, 2009 2:02 pm

    I’d like to attend these sessions, please. Thanks!

  10. Heather James on February 24th, 2009 2:23 pm

    I’d love to attend the one on the 13 March. I will be in Dublin that day.

    If I got you an adobe connect room, would you transmit or record the events for people who can’t make it from down the country?

  11. elaine o'carroll on February 24th, 2009 2:57 pm

    Hi,
    I would like to attend all three. Thanks!

  12. Gita on February 26th, 2009 10:54 am

    I would love to come for those. Please let me know if there are still spaces left.

  13. Derval Kennedy on February 26th, 2009 11:28 am

    I would love to come to the next two sessions on March 5th and March 12th if not too late?

    Please let me know if you still have capacity.

  14. martha on February 26th, 2009 12:21 pm

    @Gita, you are more than welcome to join! See you tonight!

    @Derval, you have the last spot in both of those! We will see you next week.

    Thanks both of you for your interest!

    –Martha

  15. Barbara on February 26th, 2009 7:04 pm

    I would love to attend all!