I highly recommend Lightning Talks. Participants are allowed to present on any topic they want for 5 minutes. They’ve worked wonders for Effective Altruism DC.
The main consideration is how to do questions: You can do these immediately after each talk. Or you can finish all talks, then do a giant free form discussion. Or you can finish all talks, ask who’s interested in each speaker, and then split them up into breakout rooms. Or you can let people have ongoing conversations in the chat room. Or you can tell people to message the speaker individually.
The most orderly way is to do a short live Q&A after each talk. Then tell people to message the speaker directly for additional questions. This prevents the chatroom from spilling over into the next topic.
Other consideration would be getting enough people to do it in the first place. I suspect this event is great for sustaining momentum, but terrible for creating it.
As for topics, I suspect most groups should start by allowing any topic. The more restrictions you add, the less participation you’ll get. Lightning Talks are primarily about lowering the barrier to presentation, and I have yet to hear of someone having too many lightning talks.
I highly recommend Lightning Talks. Participants are allowed to present on any topic they want for 5 minutes. They’ve worked wonders for Effective Altruism DC.
The main consideration is how to do questions: You can do these immediately after each talk. Or you can finish all talks, then do a giant free form discussion. Or you can finish all talks, ask who’s interested in each speaker, and then split them up into breakout rooms. Or you can let people have ongoing conversations in the chat room. Or you can tell people to message the speaker individually.
The most orderly way is to do a short live Q&A after each talk. Then tell people to message the speaker directly for additional questions. This prevents the chatroom from spilling over into the next topic.
Other consideration would be getting enough people to do it in the first place. I suspect this event is great for sustaining momentum, but terrible for creating it.
As for topics, I suspect most groups should start by allowing any topic. The more restrictions you add, the less participation you’ll get. Lightning Talks are primarily about lowering the barrier to presentation, and I have yet to hear of someone having too many lightning talks.