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How to Pitch (and Run) a Great SRCCON Session |
Our peer-led sessions combine skillsharing, discussion, and collaboration. |
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Erik Westra |
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We've gathered advice from participants at previous SRCCONs to assemble a picture of what makes great sessions great, how to make your pitch stand out, and how to be an awesome facilitator—even if you're new to the conference or the community.
Successful sessions often emerge from a single question or problem—if you’ve been struggling with just about any aspect of your work, you can bet others have dealt with it, too. (When we receive multiple pitches on the same subject, we sometimes suggest that the proposers consider combining forces, but no one's obligated to do so.)
Last year's sessions dealt with topics including burnout, chatbots, community-building, documentation, hiring processes, illustration, kite-mapping, machine learning, mobile dataviz, newsroom analytics, and user-centered design. To give you a taste, here's a small selection of great sessions from 2015.
SRCCON is a genuinely participatory event, and it's hard to participate in a session that's mostly lecture with a few minutes for discussion, so we look for pitches that include real interactivity. Outstanding sessions in previous years have included design exercises, games, technical skillshares, small-group breakouts, physical movement, and field trips, and we're always interested in new ideas. Our final program will include both conversational sessions, where people can dig into questions or problems in a way they can't at larger conferences, and technical sessions, where people share specific expertise and participants leave with a new skill.
It's also useful to think about your target information/activity density and desired takeaways. Over-programming a session with too many activities can make it impossible to get to your desired end-state—but a session that's under-designed can easily turn into a conversation between a handful of the loudest people. We're happy to help facilitators figure out the right balance, and don't expect perfection at the pitch stage, but it's good to start thinking about content density early on. (And when in doubt, narrow your scope.)
Effective SRCCON facilitation is about effort and preparation more than expertise. Our facilitators plan and guide sessions, ask great questions, share what they know, and learn from their peers. We find that the best sessions are often led by facilitators who:
- have a clear outcome in mind—what they want people to leave with,
- know what they can realistically cover in a single session,
- build a clear outline for the session, but deviate from it as needed,
- actively seek to run balanced, inclusive conversations (for discussion-focused session formats),
- are clear about any necessary prerequisites or environment/setup requirements (for technical sessions), and
- make a few simple backup plans in case a session gets a larger or smaller audience than expected.
On the flip side, facilitators who have a harder time have usually tried to fit too much stuff—information or activities—into too little time.
If that sounds like a lot of effort…it is! But it also means that people who are brand-new to the community—or to a topic—can make excellent facilitators if they're willing to put in a little prep time. We provide group and one-on-one support to help facilitators prepare for their sessions, and we can help match you with a co-facilitator if you're pitching solo and want someone to work with you on the ground.