Speaker Resources

Information for Speakers

  • The Speaker Green Room will be in Santa Fe 4 on Sunday-Wednesday.
  • Please be in your presentation room at least 15 minutes before your talk to meet your session chair.
  • The Quiet Room will be in Santa Fe 3 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.

  • Adrienne Lowe, DSF Director of Advancement, DjangoCon US and Django Girls Atlanta organizer.
  • Anna Ossowski, Developer Relations at Elastic, speaker, mentor, PyCon Open Spaces advisor, DjangoCon Diversity Chair, Django Girls Omaha and San Francisco organizer, PyLadies Remote co-lead.
  • Frank Wiles, President of the Board, Django Software Foundation, Founder, REVSYS.
  • Jacinda Shelly. Jacinda nurtured an early love of sharing knowledge by recording books on cassette for her brothers to listen to as bedtime stories. She has spoken at multiple technical conferences, including PyCon and DjangoCon US. She works for Doctor On Demand and lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter.
  • Josue Balandrano Coronel, DEFNA board member and software engineer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
  • Katia Lira, Full-stack dev and DEFNA Board Member. I gave a tutorial last year overcoming my nerves and fear and you can too!
  • Katie McLaughlin, PyCon AU Site Chair (2018/2019), DjangoCon AU Organiser (2017), PSF Fellow, PSF Director, DSF Director.
  • Philip James, Core Contributor to the BeeWare project and Senior Software Engineer at Patreon. Philip has spoken at a number of DjangoCons and PyCons around the world.
  • Portia Burton, Python programmer who really digs blockchain.
  • Dr. Russell Keith-Magee, 11 year veteran of the Django core team, former President of the Django Software Foundation, founder of the BeeWare project, developing GUI tools to support the development of Python software. When he’s not contributing to open source, he does freelance web development from his home in Perth, Western Australia.
  • Sebastian Vetter, Vancouver Python Organizer, Senior Engineer @ Eventbase, Conference Enthusiast.

Slide Guidelines

  • Use Keynote, PowerPoint, Open Office, or Google Presentations 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.
  • 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!