Welcome to the EclipseCon 2020 speaker guide! A top priority of the EclipseCon team is to support our speakers and make sure that your experience is positive, stress-free, and as technically smooth as possible, and this guide is an important part of that support.
To supplement the information on this page, we have created a downloadable Speaker Guide that includes presentation best practices and equipment recommendations. Please be sure to read it before you attend your speaker tech-check (see below for more about the tech-checks). Click on the image below to access the guide.
As always, if you have questions, comments, or need help, email us at speakers@eclipsecon.org. We are here to help!
Presenting at EclipseCon
As we all know by now, a virtual event is not the same experience as a live event. So we have re-tooled EclipseCon to be successful in this new environment. The most obvious changes are shorter days that start later, shorter talks, and interactive Q&A sessions that help audiences stay engaged as active participants.
We are using Swapcard as our virtual event platform. Swapcard is best known for its AI-driven matchmaking that allows attendees to make highly relevant connections with people and content, and promotes attendee engagement and a high level of interactivity.
Each session is a Zoom instance that is live-streamed through Swapcard to EclipseCon attendees. Even if you pre-record your talk, you will need to plan to be online during the broadcast of your talk so that you can answer questions from attendees during the Q&A session at the end.
Each session is scheduled into a 30-minute slot. Please plan to present for no more than 25 minutes to allow for a Q&A session at the end. The Q&A session should be no more than 5 minutes long; shorter is fine!
There will be a content moderator and an AV technician in each virtual room. The content moderator will monitor the session Question feed and session chat in Swapcard, and will pass questions to you for the Q&A at the end. The AV tech will cue you when it’s time to start your talk, and handle any technical issues that come up. Details on how to access the event "green room" (before you talk) and your session (to present your talk) will be coming in early October.
Speaker Tech-Checks
Speakers have the opportunity to sign up for a short, individual session for an equipment and environment check. Tech-check sessions are scheduled on September 8, 9, 10, and 11, 16:00 - 20:00 CET. An email was sent to each speaker on September 1 with information on how to sign up for a tech-check. If you missed that email, you can access the signup form here.