If you are presenting a session at ProductCamp, please use the master slide template ProductCamp Toronto 2020 Slide Master.
Please consider the following guidelines for presentations (thanks to our friends at ProductCamp Austin).
Session Format
Session formats at ProductCamp are not meant to be restrictive, but communicative. If you have in mind a particular style of delivery and engagement of the participants, please note it in your proposal so that Campers will better understand what to expect from the dynamics of the session. Suggested formats are listed here.
Some Very Important Guidelines to Consider:
ProductCamp sessions are NOT for selling your product, your service, or you (e.g. consultants and recruiters). People come to ProductCamp and give up a Saturday to give and receive useful information, not to get pitched at. If you have expertise in your field, that will come through in your session and people will seek you out to learn about your product organically. If you would like to hand out materials in your session, that is acceptable, if the material is relevant to the topic at hand (e.g. a worksheet in a workshop session, a diagram in a presentation). Marketing slides for your product are not acceptable. ProductCamp Toronto provides official sponsors of ProductCamp with tables to distribute their literature to those who want it. It is fine to introduce yourself in the beginning of your session and mention who you are, where you work, and what you do, and we encourage that. Contact the organizers if you have any questions about what is and is not appropriate. We do not enforce a lot of top down control on ProductCamp sessions, but this is a hard and fast rule – violate it and we might have to ban you from presenting in the future. Thanks for helping us keep the un-conference spirit of ProductCamp alive.
Lessons Learned from Previous ProductCamps …. (by listening to participants)
There is nothing like leading a session at ProductCamp – it will be the most fun you can pack into a 45-50 minute conference session. ProductCamp is completely user driven. There is just you and your peers. That lends a realism to the sessions that you can’t get anywhere else. Presenting at ProductCamp is fun, and an experience you will remember forever. Use this opportunity to polish your presentation and facilitation skills in a non-threatening environment, talking about problems that matter with people who “get it.” We learned at the previous ProductCamp events that certain types of sessions work better than others. These are guidelines, but feel free to break the mold and bring something new to the table.
Participants Liked:
- Interactivity
- Discussion
- Use Cases/Examples
- Whiteboards
- Roundtables
Participants Disliked:
- Excessive Slideware (>10 slides is probably pushing it for most sessions!)
- Pushing questions to the end
- Anything Sales-y
