The Late London PM March Techmeet Wrap

The March 2006 London PM Tech meet went well, we had 35 people turn up and most of them came along to the pub afterwards. While everything seemed to go according to plan there are three things anyone hosting an event should know…

Firstly get a copy of all the slides on a single machine (if possible - if you have speakers using magic point, keynote and Powerpoint good luck…). This will make lightening talks run a lot smoother, saves you trying seven laptops with the projector and stops people from bringing their own electronic baby, with a full head of wires, up to the podium.

The second thing is to get the speakers (or your single laptop with all the slides) to turn off power saving modes and screen savers. Yes, we all like long lasting laptops. No, we don’t like watching you type your password in every five slides. While this didn’t happen on the night I can see it catching me in the future.

Finally, lightning talks rock. Lightening talks are limited to five minutes and can be used to coax inexperienced speakers in to contributing something. They can also bring an audience back to life and if you get lucky with the speakers (Nicholas Clark and Tom Hukins spring to mind) you can get the whole audience almost bouncing. Which was great to watch.

All in all it was a good night, I enjoyed the talks, the audience were nice and I learned a couple of new tricks.