New speaker preparation approach for #WCEU 2018

The WordCamp Europe 2018 Content team is excited to put the spotlight on a new approach that we’ve implemented for this year’s speaker preparation: Don’t just speak, teach: How to effectively communicate your expertise.

Most conferences offer speaker mentorship only to new speakers under the presumption that what they need help with is surface level, such as mastering stage presence. Don’t just speak, teach goes deeper, using teaching and learning techniques to help experts strengthen how they plan their content and then communicate it so that their presentations become impactful, effective learning experiences that put attendees at the centre. For speakers, the goal is to help their confidence and presence come more easily once this deeper skill is named and practiced. For attendees, the value of joining a session and what they can learn — what’s in it for them— is clearer.

Mentoring program: teaching and learning approach

Whether it is a speaker’s first time in front of an audience or their five hundredth, they can choose to work with the Content team one on one to prepare. Depending on their experience, this can include fleshing out the ideas further, planning and conceptualising the content, methods for content delivery, slide deck design and editing, and/or rehearsing. All of these pieces involve a teaching and learning approach: what is the learning outcome (what do I want people to do as a result of consuming the information that I share)? Where is my audience starting? How will I get them to this outcome? How will I know if they’ve successfully reached it?

Using metrics built into the program, we will also for the first time be able to articulate “impactful and effective” and determine if we have achieved them. This will involve not only day-of observation and note-taking during participating speakers’ sessions, but also post-event interviews with participants and leveraging attendee survey feedback.

The overarching goal is to infuse a teaching and learning approach into the conference preparation strategy–namely considering it as a learning experience that needs learning design–to make the value of taking time to plan and present clearer. For attendees, it should become easier to see how the new material can fit into their existing knowledge, and how they might take it home to their jobs.

We have a handful of speakers and workshop hosts participating in this mentoring program right now, so you, our audience, can expect an even better learning experience.