Speaking Guidelines

Overview

Grokking Vietnam (shortname Grokking) is the platform aimed to connect Vietnamese Software Engineers from all-over-the world. At the moment, Grokking is organizing techtalks for Vietnamese software engineers in Ho Chi Minh City.

This guideline is for speakers presenting at Grokking technical techtalks. We aim to keep the talks’ quality high, please work with us and follow the guideline we’ve laid out below :)

Preparation

Once you’ve confirmed your talk’s topic, please prepare the following information beforehand. We’ll reach out to get these information.

1. Talk Title

2. Talk Description (< 100 words)

3. Talk Language: English or Vietnamese (please use the language you’re most comfortable presenting for maximal delivery)

4. Talk Duration: usually around 30-40 mins

5. Speaker Bio (< 50 words)

6. Your Phone Number (for us to contact)

After you confirmed your topic, we'll arrange a session for you to rehearse with a sample audience (5-8 engineers) to provide feedback on your content and your presentation.

Talk Duration

Our talk duration is 45-60 minutes, excluding Q&A.

Slides/Presentation

• Please number your slides (current slide / total slides)

• Please send us a copy of your presentation slides by 2 weeks before the actual event

• You are encouraged to rehearse your talk before the day of presentation

• Please be at the event’s venue at least 15 minutes before the event’s talk

Talk Topics

(Please refer to our past talks for a better understanding of our past topics)

In general, Speaker will share something short and concrete, usually:

• programming techniques or personal experience, or opinions on a particular topic;

• an open source project you just built and want to share with others;

• a technical book you’re writing and want to get feedback

• an overview of a system you recently built

Your talk should be:

• Technical and have a clear takeaway for the audience

• If your topic can be approached by both business and engineering perspectives, please focus more on the engineering perspective.

• Be specific:

  • specific system/concept/process that you have built or learnt

  • what specific technologies are chosen and why;

  • what lessons learn along the way;

  • how the system has evolved to the change in business/scaling requirements

• The talk should have examples to help audience understand the concept better

• Please include more diagrams and pictures to help the audience understand better

• No get rich talk, no entrepreneurship talk, no business talk

• Please minimize time talking about your company, only share what’s needed as a context to the topic being presented.

• If your talk is too deep, it is okay, please feel free to dig deep inside the topic as this is what Grokking aimed for. We’ll try our best to make sure the audience can prepare before coming.

• Your slide should be numbered so that audience can referred to if they want to ask you questions after the presentation.

Special notes for Recruiting:

• Speakers are allowed to publicize their companies’ hiring as part of the presentation. However, speakers are discouraged from hard-selling their job positions, or spending long time talking about their company’s background.

• Remember, if you deliver a good technical presentation, the audience will get excited and come seek you for opportunities.

Remember, we’re here to help you have the best technical presentation and share your knowledge with other like-minded engineers!