[LRUG] Feb meeting on Mon 11th - Lightning talks required

[Murray Steele]

Hi folks,

Our next meeting is due on Monday 11th February, and as is customary we’re
doing our “lightning talks only” meeting.  This means eight speakers with
talks of no more than 10 minutes.  We’re still looking for speakers to help
us fill out the meeting.

I reckon almost everyone could talk about something for 10 minutes, so if
what’s holding you back is that you don’t think you have anything to talk
about let me give you some ideas.

A good lightning talk idea is to go deep on a very narrow aspect of
something.  Everyone can get something out of a talk like this, here are
two of my favourites of this form.  The first about a single feature of
rails, the second is about a single method in the ruby stdlib:

* "Just in Time" by Elle Meredith: a deep dive on timezones in rails -
https://brightonruby.com/2015/just-in-time-elle-meredith/ (yes it’s a bit
longer than 10 minutes, but not much)
* “Splitting Strings” by Chris Zetter; how the split method on String in
the ruby standard library works -
https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/11029-splitting-strings

Pick something like a feature of rails, or part of the stdlib in ruby, or a
gem, and go a little bit deeper with your explanation on each slide you
write until you’ve filled 10 minutes.  No-one says you have to be an expert
in something to give a talk about it so you can use writing the talk to do
the deep dive for yourself.  It’s the perfect way to finally explore
something you’ve only ever scratched the surface of yourself.

This isn’t the only sort of topic that works for a lightning talk, but it’s
a good starting point if you’re unsure of where to start with a talk.  For
some other ideas why not check out the videos from our last few lightning
talk meetings; I’m sure you’ll get some inspiration!

* 2018 - https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/10571-lrug-february
* 2017 - https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/8503-london-ruby-usergroup-meetup
* 2016 -
https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/7698-lrug-february-2016-lightning-talks-meeting

Get in touch at talks at lrug.org if you want to volunteer.

Cheers,

Murray (& the rest of the LRUG organising team)
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