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Speaker Resources

Information for Speakers

  • The Speaker Green Room will be in Willow II on Sunday-Wednesday. Please be in the Green Room at least 10 minutes before your talk to meet your session runner, who will escort you to your presentation room.
  • The Quiet Room will be in Willow I on all conference days.

Need some help with your talk?

Presenters, regardless of experience, sometimes want a little help. If you’d like any help in preparing, or presenting your talk, some awesome members of our community have volunteered to be speaker mentors. A mentor is an experienced presenter who has volunteered to help other presenters. For first-time presenters, non-native English speakers, under-confident or uncertain speakers, or anyone who would just appreciate another set of eyes, our mentors will be here to help. You’ll get the best results by forming a relationship with one mentor, rather than contacting several.

  • Adrienne Lowe, DSF Director of Advancement, DjangoCon US and Django Girls Atlanta organizer, Your Django Story leader.
  • Aisha Bello, DjangoGirls Lagos organizer, a Python community enthusiastic with a lot of passion for women tech education in Africa.
  • Anna Ossowski, PSF and DSF member, PyCon US and DjangoCon US organizer, PyLadies Remote group leader.
  • Frank Wiles, President of the Board, Django Software Foundation, Founder, RevSys.
  • Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Former Django BDFL and current Core Contributor. Employed at 18F, partner at RevSys. Jacob would love to work with non-native English speakers.
  • Katie McLaughlin, PyCon AU and DjangoCon AU Organiser, PSF Contributing Member.
  • Kojo Idrissa, DjangoCon US organizer, Code Newbie, author.
  • Dr Russell Keith-Magee is a 11 year veteran of the Django core team, and for 5 years, was President of the Django Software Foundation. He’s also the founder of the BeeWare project, developing GUI tools to support the development of Python software. When he’s not contributing to open source, he does freelance web development from his home in Perth, Western Australia.
  • Sebastian Vetter, Vancouver Python Organizer, Senior Engineer @ Eventbase, Conference Enthusiast.

Slide Guidelines

  • Use Keynote, PowerPoint, Open Office, or Google Presentations for your slides.
  • Minimal slides are best—avoid walls of text and long lists of bullets.
  • Aim for high contrast slides, avoiding colors that may be difficult to see for those with colorblindness. (You can check your contrast online; you just need the hex codes for your colors!)
  • Light background with dark text is easiest to read; be mindful that the projector is white.
  • Make text as large as possible, at least 68pt.
  • Choose fonts with adequate spacing between letters, and avoid thin or cursive fonts.
  • Leave the bottom ⅓ of your slides free of text to ensure nothing is obscured.
  • Avoid or limit flashing videos or animated gifs, as these may have negative effects for people with seizure disorders, migraines, or ADD/ADHD.
  • Images, memes, and GIFs should be appropriate for a professional audience.
  • Your talk should lose nothing if the slides aren’t visible. Generally describe graphs, images, and other information for the audience.
  • Consider including your Twitter handle on your opening and closing slides!
  • Consider publishing your slides after your talk (on the platform of your choice) and tweeting the link with the #djangocon hashtag.

Thanks to AlterConf for their amazing speaking recommendations!