At our recent Focused Labs onsite in Chicago, the whole company enjoyed what has become a regular practice: lightning talks! This is our fourth iteration at company summits. Nine brave volunteers went to the podium and shared something they are passionate about. Each speaker gets 5 minutes with 1 minute of Q&A. It’s rapid-fire, intriguing and often hilarious.
You may familiar with the lightning talk format already, but I wanted to share why this practice is important to us as software consultants and why your organization could benefit also.
Mastering your craft
As software consultants, short pitches are common. We help clients strategize, discover product offerings and improve software practices. And we are constantly improving our own skills at squeezing an important message into an informal pitch. Sometimes longer, sometimes with slides, often not. Preparing a lightning talk is great practice for this important skill.
Lightning talks are a great place to hone this skill in front of a familiar audience. It also helps us get to know each other a little better, learn some things you never knew were so interesting, and have some fun!
We are a hybrid workforce
Half of our people are remote, so it’s rare that we are all together (for Focused Labs, only twice a year). Lightning talks are one part of a deliberate strategy to build trust and create a cohesive organization, despite being physically distributed.
The great equalizer
Company meetings or departmental retreats usually feature lots of presentations from the C-suite, department heads, etc, and that’s important, but lightning talks are special in a different way. Absolutely anyone in your organization should feel welcome to participate, from a new hire to the CEO. Everyone who presents will feel a little more important, more connected and more involved.
Where do great ideas come from anyway?
We are always ready to learn something new, not just for our own knowledge but also because new ideas can lead indirectly to business value you never saw coming.
Since starting this practice, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “You remember when __________ did a lightning talk about ________?” Sprinkled through this article are some examples of talks that were presented at Focused Labs IRLs.
Garrett Haufschild, “Endurance Training: How to efficiently train”
Ready to give it a try?
All it takes is a little planning and the willingness to try something new. Here are some tips and tricks gathered from our two sessions. I hope you have as much fun with this event as we have!
If you’re already doing lightning talks, please comment. We’d love to hear about your experience.
Pro Tips for Organizers
What’s the format?
There’s no magic formula. Do what works for you. What has worked well for us is to allocate 5 minutes per speaker plus 1 minute of Q&A. This makes for an hour if you have 10 speakers. We usually allocate 90 minutes and have been getting 12 speakers. More than 12 will be hard to hold the audience’s attention.
There is only one unbreakable rule: you only have 5 minutes. This is the whole point. If you go over you will get gonged. With a little practice it’s quite easy to stay under 5 minutes. See part 3 of this series for some tips on how to prepare a short talk.
Allow for 1 minute of “lightning Q&A” after each talk. Trust me, you’ll get questions. And the questions can be as good as the talks.
Erin Hochstatter, “Slack as Institutional Memory”
Speaker Preparation
- Start well in advance. Give people space to practice and get feedback from peers.
- Create a messaging channel in Slack or Teams to create buzz, solicit volunteers, and collaborate on topic ideas. Share previous talks as a reference!
- Do a practice round with a live audience. Speakers find it useful to validate timing and often adjust content afterwards.
- Time Management is key:
- 5 mins for intro & welcome
- 6 mins per speaker (5 min talk and 1 minute Q&A)
- 5 mins for closing and wrap-up Q&A
- For one hour, 8 speakers is about right
- For 90 mins, 12 is about right
- Line up a time-keeper for game day. Their reward is getting to choose the “gong” sound on their phone. (bonus points for showing up with a real gong on game day)
On Game Day
- #1 Pro Tip for ensuring a smooth session is to run everything out of a shared folder on a single machine at the podium! Swapping out laptops every 6 minutes to a no-go.
- Consider having presentations available offline, especially if you are at a remote location like a conference center with spotty Wi-Fi.
- Decide on order ahead of time so people are ready before they present.
Annie McDonald, “How to survive a concert”
Ryan Taylor, “Patterns of Enterprise Musicianship”
Pro Tips for Speakers
Don’t Stress - it’s 5 minutes!
If you want to share an idea you are passionate about, but are a little shy about speaking in front of a group, this is the activity for you!
You can do this! 5 minutes goes by very quickly when you are talking about something you know well with a few fun slides to back it up!
- I’m just gonna say it … don’t wait till the last minute! Give yourself plenty of practice time.
- Tell a story. Describe something you care about.
- Use images generously. Make it fun! The slide count should be low and the image count high.
- Fun is the operative word, although we’ve seen some serious talks that were also very well received.
- Practice, practice, practice! Work on slowing down your speaking pace and use a timer to nail down your message to a strict 5 minutes.
Shavina Chau: “Money Laundering: not financial advice”
Vince Finn, “Why Play Games? For Competitive”
Calvin Nelson, “Renaissance Fencing”
Kaylynn Watson, “Xenobots”
Abraham Herrera, “The Art of Sampling”
Shahed Syed, “Designing an Escape Room”
Luke “5-Bar” Mueller, “Foosball!”
Travis Pennetti, “Pizza, Places, and Things”
For More Information
- Lightning Talk, Wikipedia
- What is a lightning talk? Karen Batt, Enterprisers, Red Hat
- What is an in-person lightning talk? Student Research Conference, University of Vermont.
- To overcome your fear of public speaking, stop thinking about yourself - Sarah Gershman, Harvard Business Review. A great introduction to why we get scared of speaking in public and what to do about it.
- https://www.tascosslibrary.org.au/how-to/give-good-lightning-talk - TasCOSS Library. Really good checklist.
