tl;dr Are you from an underrepresented or marginalized group in the Drupal community? Have you ever wanted to speak at a camp or con? We're planning a training for you and want to know you're interested. Please fill out our survey.
If you'd like to donate to our Speaker Initiative specifically, you can do that here:
Are you from an underrepresented or marginalized group? Have you thought: I wish more people like me were giving talks at Drupal events? Or: Why is there no one like me on this panel?
Have you thought about speaking at a meetup or conference but haven’t been able to think of a topic? Feel like you don’t think you know anything worth speaking about? Feel like you’re not an expert in anything so who would listen to you anyway? Or the opposite problem… Do you have too many ideas and don’t know which one to pick?
We are excited to present a workshop just for you!
Some of you may remember Jill Binder’s talk at DrupalCon Nashville in 2018 on how her team helped more kinds of folks start speaking at events in WordPress. We are pleased to be bringing her in to do the workshop for us in Drupal!
This is not your typical “how to do public speaking” workshop. No. This is a step that comes before starting to learn how to speak publicly. This workshop is all about things like:
- What has stopped you from speaking in the past
- Exploring how to move past your fears
- Common myths about public speaking
- Different talk formats to consider
- Finding your area of expertise (yes, you have an area of expertise!)
When facilitators did this workshop in the past, they realized that once the participants found a topic to speak on, the participants wanted the next steps after that, so Jill will also be offering:
- Coming up with a talk title
- Writing a great pitch
- Creating your outline
- Writing your bio
- Good slide decks
- Tips on becoming a better speaker
- Opportunities to practice speaking
This is not theory. This is hands-on. We will be doing exercises together, getting feedback from the group and the facilitator (Jill).
You will be coming out of this workshop with a draft topic, talk format, title, pitch, outline. There will be opportunities to practice speaking. Maybe you will be one of the ones who come out of it feeling motivated to start speaking at Drupal events – how cool would that be!
(It’s also ok if after taking the workshop you don’t want to be speaking at events yet.)
In our global online workshop (2 hours each on 2 consecutive weekends), you will have the chance to share with the whole large group and in virtual mini-breakout rooms of 4-5 each.
Our facilitator, Jill Binder, has been running this workshop in WordPress with much success and is now expanding this to other technologies. We love her work and are excited that she is offering it to us. Check her work out at Diverse Speakers In Tech and follow her on Twitter.
Questions? We’ll answer them in the next blog post. Please leave them in the comments.
For now, we’d like to start finding out if there is interest in this. If you feel you qualify as somebody from an underrepresented group and would consider attending a workshop (for free with an optional low price donation), please fill out our survey.
Please forward this post to your friends and allies to help us build a diverse and inclusive community!