mission.html

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layout: default
title: Mission
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<section class="content">
    <h2>Mission</h2>
    <p>The mission of the Speak Up! project is to assist in the guidance and
        mentorship of potential <b>technical speakers, tutorial presenters and
        attendees</b> of conference, user groups and other community events.
        We hope by providing access to mentors from <i>many</i> programming
        languages who are seasoned speakers, conference organizers, or other
        volunteers we can grow not just the gender diversity of speakers at
        technical events, but the diversity of speakers at technical conferences
        as a whole.
    </p>

    <p>Through positive, reinforcing, polite, and safe actions - we all can
        increase the diversity of voices in our communities, conferences and
        elsewhere.
    </p>

    <p>There's a lot of work that goes into speaking at a conference. You can
        learn to do all of the following:
        <ul>
            <li>Find good conferences or user groups to speak at</li>
            <li>Identify past talks which were successful</li>
            <li>Evaluate the appropriateness of your submission for a topic</li>
            <li>Structure a successful talk</li>
            <li>Submit it to a conference or user group</li>
            <li>Get leads, introductions and references</li>
            <li>Keep tabs and updates on call for proposals and due dates</li>
        </ul>
        We will try to help you with everything we can - but yes, in many cases
        the best way to get better at speaking in public is to <i>speak in public</i>.
        While many might say, "Go to Toastmasters" or another group, as you can
        see above, there's a lot more that goes into a successful technical
        presentation.
    </p>

    <blockquote>
        90% of the battle can be won by becoming good at recording videos
        (without 101 takes), doing live webinars, or even setting up a regular
        YouTube channel. New speakers often battle with the responsibility of
        speaking and being the target of multiple people's attention for a
        solid block of time. These battles can be fought virtually.
        - <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4859331">Peter Cooper</a>
    </blockquote>

    <p>We wish to help train and guide those who might be
        considering submitting a proposal, or those who are just
        setting on the road to speaking at a conference or user group and
        who wish to learn what and how to prepare to speak. This may include
        one on one mentorship, pointers to resources, in person mentorship,
        guidance to a local user group (in order to practice a talk in a smaller
        venue), and connecting speakers with other training and outreach groups
        such as <a href="http://www.devchix.com/">DevChix</a>,
        <a href="http://www.pyladies.com/">PyLadies</a> and others.
    </p>

    <p>We hope that our mentors and volunteers will be able to do any of the
        following:
        <ul>
            <li>Connect potential speakers with a relevant technical community</li>
            <li>Review talks, give pointers, and provide encouragement</li>
            <li>Suggest grants and outreach programs for new speakers</li>
        </ul>
    </p>

    <p>Potentially, we would like to be able to help provide a "burden of proof"
        on a given person's ability to speak, or presentation, being used as
        references for budding speakers when they submit talks to conferences
        who frequently look for "known" factors such as community reach,
        popularity and speaking track records.
    </p>
</section>