Lightning talks are a group of short talks given by a individuals in a specified time period. Conferences are realizing that they are a great way to kick things off, to get people thinking about topics that they would like to know more about. It's also a great way to introduce topics to people.
At SRT, we realized that impromptu conversations between people yielded a lot of information that others might benefit from. And we wondered what else we were missing! We originally considered lightning talks as a way to share information between the members of our company, but we quickly realized that we wanted to include the community at large, for several reasons:
- There are a lot of really smart people in the Ann Arbor area doing really cool things. We, selfishly, want to know about those things.
- We want the local business community to know what interesting and cool things people in Ann Arbor do.
Our lightning talks are open to any members of the community to speak on tech topics of their choice for 5 minutes (we have a kitchen timer and we use it!). You're free to speak, or simply to listen. The short talks are great for people who have little or no speaking experience to gain confidence in front of a group of people. They're also great for people who have speaking experience but are not accustomed to consolidating their talks to the essential elements.
We hold bi-weekly lightning talks on Friday afternoons. We think that a little infusion of energy from the tech community is a great way to wind down the work week. While some people have complained that they can't attend because lightning talks are during "work hours", we have decided to ignore calls to move them to the evenings. There are many opportunities to attend user group meetings in the evenings, and many of us already attend those. But we strongly believe that programmers should NOT have to always spend their "own" time learning, that it's essential that employers dedicate time to that as well. If you want to attend and can't make it at 3:30, that's fine! Just show up when you can. We usually go until around 5 pm.
SRT Solutions is at 206 S. Fifth Ave, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI.
Hope to see you at lightning talks!