Evangelism Reps Training Program/Trainings/Bangalore 2013

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Contents

Workshop rules:

  • We are on time. If you are late, you are not part of this. There is no coming and going.
  • We stick to the agenda - we have a few hours and we should use them well
  • This is for you to work with each other. Get to know each other, share information afterwards and keep this going.
  • Bring a computer with an editor to edit HTML

Workshop outline (timing from starting point):

00:00 - 00:05 Introduction

  • Who am I?
  • What are you going to learn today
  • What is expected from you afterwards

00:05 - 00:25 Getting to know the group

  • Who are you? What do you want to get out of this?

00:25 - 00:45 Resources

Where to find information

How to ask for information

How to tell us about events

  • Fill out the dev-events request form http://bit.ly/dev-events
  • Send an email to dev-events@mozilla.org - the form should tell us:
    • When the event is
    • Where the event is
    • What you want Mozilla to do (send you as a speaker, send a speaker, sponsorship, sponsor people to go)
    • What we get out of it - why should we be there
    • What the audience is like
    • What we should cover there

The developer events team is meeting every Monday going through the event list, so please give us at least a month advance notice. The more time and the more info we get, the better we can plan.

Where to report what you did

00:45 - 01:15 What makes a good presentation?

Covering the basics

What makes a talk good can vary from talk to talk, as in a keynote is different from a technical presentation or a product presentation. However, unless you are amazingly good as a speaker and are at an event like TED, you need to cover the very basics:

  • What will you talk about
  • Who you are
  • Where to find the talk later and how to contact you

Story beats information

Anyone can explain the how of a certain technology, product or methodology. Talks are in a lot of cases a timed snapshot of any of these. So instead of explaining the details of the technology, your job is first and foremost to explain the why of the technology and get people excited about looking more into it. Tell the story behind the tech, find out why people should care to use it.

Yes, and…

Yes, and… is a powerful concept from improv theatre. It is a means of keeping a conversation going and adding to an idea instead of conversations declining into arguments. For a talk, you can use a similar idea. Instead of trying to force-feed your ideas to the audience you can piggy-back on another success, a current event, a new exciting thing that happened, and show how what you want to bring across makes this exciting bit even more amazing. Instead of artificially creating a "wow" you add to one that already exists.

WIIFM

Always strive to answer the "what is in it for me" for the audience. This means you need to cater your talk to what makes the current audience tick.

The story arc

Engaging stories follow a principle called the story arc. You build up to a climax and follow with a conclusion. In the case of a presentation this is the same: introduce the topic, build up to a climax explaining a main point you want to get across and then conclude with pointers where to learn more and where to get your hands dirty.

Illustrations

Words should come from you. Instead of forcing the audience to read along with you ensure that you use good illustrations and imagery that helps explaining the points you want to make.

Videos

Videos are a double-edged sword. They are very engaging but could be too engaging. Screencasts without sound for you to talk over rather than having to type things in can be amazingly effective.

01:15 - 01:25 Break

01:25 - 01:50 Exercise: expanding a bullet list

01:50 - 02:10 Presentations of the expanded bullet list

02:10 - 02:30 Tools

The presentation slide deck

To make it easy for anyone to present without having to have powerpoint or keynote we put together a mozilla-branded presentation template. This one uses HTML5 and CSS to make presenting in the browser easy. On the download page you also find documentation how to use it and a screencast.

Screencasting software

Screencasts are incredibly useful. They allow you to show functionality without the danger of live presentations (forgetting your password when logging in, browser crashing, no connectivity being available…). There are many different tools available, both online and offline.

  • Screenr is probably the simplest.
  • Licecap is a way to record animated GIFs from part of a page.
  • Showterm allows you to record the Terminal

Screenshot software and cropping

Most operating systems have ways to create a screenshot. Other tools are available in the browser as add-ons. Awesomescreenshot for example is a great way to take a screenshot of what is happening in the browser - including full pages. Droid@Screen is a tool to create screenshots of Android phones (which includes Firefox OS phones)

Video tools

Videos are very powerful but in most cases they need to be converted or edited. Here are some tools to help you with that:

  • YouTube Download allows you to download YouTube videos to show offline - remember, you are almost never online on stage!
  • Miro Converter converts videos simply into many different formats
  • MPEG Streamclip is another converter but also a simple editing tool

02:30 - 02:40 Break

02:40 - 03:10 Firefox OS tools

Pick and mix slide deck

The pick and mix slide deck is part of the presentation slide deck on Github. It is a large overview over all the cool things Firefox OS is - with videos and screenshots and lots and lots of information on how to present the slide deck.

Developer Tools

Developer tools are your friend when you talk about Firefox OS. Show people the responsive view and how you can build and test a layout on your computer by simulating different screen sizes.

Simulator

The Firefox OS simulator is a great tool to show all that Firefox OS can do. It is also a great tool to show how easy it is to debug apps on your computer and test them out and send them to the device with a simple click.

Adaptive Search

The adaptive search in Firefox OS is an incredibly powerful example to show how Firefox OS is different to other platforms. It brings the app to the use case rather than the use case to the app. People can search for a band and find music apps, try them out and only install them when they are happy with them. This saves a lot of unnecessary downloading and installing and makes finding an app as easy as surfing the web.

Web APIs

Web APIs are the things that enable Firefox OS to access the hardware it runs on in a secure and defined manner. They also extend HTML5 with capabilities it really needs. It is important to point out that Web APIs are not Firefox OS only but are standard proposals that can make any HTML5 based platform or browser much more capable than they are now.

Web Activities

Web Activities are a great way to enhance the functionality reach of HTML5 without having to go through the process of packaging your HTML5 app and getting it verified. Instead of doing things like accessing the camera on behalf of the user, you ask the user to give you a picture.

JSFiddle

JSFiddle is not only great to do collaborative coding online. By adding a simple /fxos.html you can create a Firefox OS app and show it in the simulator.

03:10 - 03:30 Exercise: preparing a quick talk

03:30 - 03:50 Presentations

03:50 - 04:00 Break

04:00 - 04:20 Publishing

Publishing your slides/talk

It is very important to have your slides available on the web. The first question you always get in a Q&A session is where the slides can be found. Where you put them is up to you. There are quite a few services to host slides, like Lanyrd, Slideshare, Slid.es, Speakerdeck and many others. Where is really not important as long as it is a place where people can find them and watch them.

If you have the chance, record a screencast of your talk and instead of the only the slides, publish that one by uploading it to YouTube. There is nothing better than having you speaking over your slides to give them context.

Don't release slides without context or notes. People would otherwise get wrong impressions and quote you out of context.

How to use social media to promote your talk

Make sure to tell us about you speaking at dev-events@mozilla.com and on the allevangelismreps@mozilla.com - also post them on the Facebook group (if you are on Facebook) so we can help you with the promotion.

Use whatever social network you can use to promote the talk, tease the talk beforehand with one screenshot on Twitter and tell people where and when you will be speaking. Tell us at @mozhacks on Twitter and we will promote your work for you.

If you have access to the web at the conference, tweet about your slides with the hashtag of the conference. That way you become part of the overall buzz.

What to publish

There are many ways you can help the cause, it does not have to be speaking at all. We need you to think about:

  • Writing blog posts (in different languages)
  • Translating content
  • Writing on the MDN Wiki
  • Creating screencasts and demo code
  • Hosting online chats and hangouts
  • Interviewing great app developers about their HTML5 work

Spreading and linking

Whatever we create as Evangelism Reps is first and foremost there to promote the content on the official Wiki, Firefox OS DevHub and other official places. Therefore make sure you link your examples to the documentation on the wiki, to relevant bugzilla tickets and to the Hacks blog. The reason is not that we want you to give up the fame - the reason is that we don't want you to be responsible for the content in the future. Great code examples on the Wiki will be maintained and upgraded by other people when you moved on to do other things.

Official channels to promote you

We run the hacks blog, we have the @mozhacks Twitter account and talk to marketing and press of Mozilla. Tell us on the Facebook group or the mailinglist and we can use all of these to promote your great work.

How to find speaking opportunities

There are many events happening right now, some unconferences, some conferences. We get a lot of requests coming in and in a lot of cases are looking for local people to cover for us with a bit of coaching (review of your materials, video calls). If you know about a conference, just submit a paper there and see if it gets through. Tell the group in time that you want to go.

How to tell us about your opportunities

Post to the group, as simple as that.

How to deal with press and event requests

For your own protection, do not speak to the press as an official spokesperson before talking to us about it and getting some coaching and information. There is no such thing as "off the record" - everything you tell the press becomes an official Mozilla statement. If you have a request from an event you are attending to talk to the press there or to publish and article or interview in the press make sure to contact press@mozilla.com and copy [mailto: techevan@mozilla.com] in. We will come back to you as fast as we can.

Where to go from here

Go out and be awesome! Keep us in the loop by using the evangelism email list and/or the Facebook group.

04:20 - 04:40 Exercise: preparing a post about your talk

04:40 - 05:00 Wrapup and QA