Talk Selection As Mockumentary Film Editing

One of the best, and also worst, parts of organizing a conference is selecting the talks. You likely receive submissions on an order of magnitude greater than the speaking slots you have. And most of them are super great! How do you pick the ones that tell the story you want?

In this talk, I’ll explain how the methods used by “mockumentary” filmmakers like Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting For Guffman) can be used to help “find” the story in your talk submissions. This ignite also includes a “real-world” example from the speaker’s experience in making a mockumentary about swing dancing.

Yes. About swing dancing.

Transcript

1. Talk Selection As Mockumentary Film Editing Matt Stratton DevOps Evangelist, PagerDuty
3. 176 Submissions 18 spots
4. Started with an idea…
5. PROBLEM!
7. Don’t force the issue
8. Find the story
9. So what about the mockumentary stuff?
11. I made a movie about swing dancing
14. A story was written But it wasn’t in the footage
19. Let’s Review • You can’t predict what you’ll get • Start with an idea, but be flexible • Improvisation can be fun. Let your speakers be your guide
20. Want the slides? Email mattystratton@SendYourSlides.com with the subject “DevOps”