The Charter Meeting

Presenter Mentor kicked off its Charter Meeting on Wed, July 16, with a subset of the DGC, including two DEs.

The majority of the meeting was spent defining the need for building local speaking talent and various approaches for delivering guidance and support.

At a high-level, the group crafted a "first-pass" mission statement:  "Raise the overall quality of local (Dallas area, to start) technology presenters through guidance and mentoring."

A number of very good suggestions were raised:

• Monthly meetings at which prospective speakers can be critiqued and trained.
• Simulating various speaking environments (from smaller rooms to larger venues, such as the room in which the DDNUG and ASP.NET SIG meetings are held.
• Videotaping both rehearsals and the actual presentation.
• Presenter Mentor providing detailed written evaluation of a presentation.
• Co-presenting by pairing a new speaker with a more experienced, each presenting portions of the presentation.
• Group presentations in which multiple new speakers present short segments, reducing the pressure of attempting to deliver a full 2 hour presentation.
• Warm-up presentations, in which a new speaker presents for a 10 - 15 minute time slot.
• Establishing a repository for content, including slides and code, thus providing resources for other speakers to build similar presentations for their region.
  

Next steps include:

• Refiining workable approaches to mentor speakers.
• Defining a set of presentation best practices.
• Defining a format that mentoring meetings can follow. 
• Next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, 8/20, noon, at Microsoft.