Lightning Talks: Your Chance to Share at the Agile2020 Conference

Added to The Alliance

Agile2020 is coming soon, and I can’t wait for the chance to see old friends, meet new ones, and learn from some of the veterans in the Agile community.


One of my favorite tracks at Agile conferences has always been the Lightning Talks. Lightning Talks are created and presented by the attendees of the conference, and they are always fun, fast, and educational. The provide an opportunity for attendees to share something they’ve learned, something that’s worked well on their team, or something they’re excited about!

The format

The purpose of the Lightning Talk Track is to provide a lightweight, flexible opportunity for conference attendees to share valuable information with other participants. Presentations are short with one of the following formats:

  • 3-minute Lightning Talk (no slides)
  • 5-minute Lightning Talk (slides)
  • 7-minute Pecha Kucha style presentation

What I love about Lightning Talks

With such a short format, Lightning Talks get right to the point. The constraints lead to creative ways to share an important topic without the luxury for any rambling or “filler”. Speakers have to give you the 80/20 slice – the 20% of the content that gives you 80% of the benefit. In an hour, you get to hear around eight different lightning talks, so there’s a great variety of content and a high likelihood that one of the topics will be really interesting to you. There’s always a fun and supportive energy in the room. Best of all, we get a chance to hear from a diverse set of conference attendees!

How you can get involved

Submit a talk

If you’re attending the conference, you can submit your Lightning Talk Proposal here through May 27th, midnight EST. We will fill the available slots with input from community voting. If there are open slots after the submissions close, we take last minute proposals during the conference.

Vote

If you want to provide input into sessions, you can vote at the same link above. Voting will begin May 28th and end June 30th, midnight EST.

Approved submitters will be notified by June 17th.

Attend

Come to the Lightning Talks on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Check the Agile2020 conference program for all of the details. Get there early in case we end up with standing room only again!

See you in Orlando!

Eric Rapin
Lightning Talks Track Chair


About the Author


Eric Rapin is a consultant through his company Lucid Agile, Inc. and a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer®, leading efforts to adopt and improve organizations use of Scrum and other Agile methods. He has been working in software product development in various roles for over 30 years. Beginning his career as a software engineer and moving through various product development roles from dev to test to release and performance, Eric has covered the gamut in the software world, half of that time in various management roles. Eric discovered that many things he had started doing were articulated best by the Agile world and found a natural home there.  Eric has worked at many leading companies such as Nortel, Apple, Sun Microsystems, Openwave, Adobe, Tableau, and Salesforce.

Eric focuses most specifically on Retrospective Facilitation and has been active in the Retrospective Facilitator's Gathering community for several years.

Eric has also been trained as a Human Systems Dynamics Professional, bringing useful models from the science of complexity to help organizations make beneficial shifts in their outcomes.

Eric uses Innovation Games to help organizations use the ideas from gamification to help them ideate, decide, and collaborate in more effective ways.


This is an Agile Alliance community blog post. Opinions represented are personal and belong solely to the author. They do not represent opinion or policy of Agile Alliance.

Agile2023 Registration

Stay Up-to-Date!

Get updates on Agile events, programs, and more by subscribing to the Agile Alliance Newsletter.

Agile MiniCon Basics

Recent Posts

BYOC Member Lean Coffee