Presenting at a MongoDB User Group (MUG) is a great way to share your experiences working with MongoDB, drive adoption of your product and create a closer connection between your company’s services and MongoDB. If you're new to public speaking, it's a great place to get presentation experience or test out a talk for a future conference. Here are some tips for giving presentations at a user group.
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Content: What Should I Talk About At a User Group?
- Teach them something: MongoDB User Group members have different levels of experience with MongoDB but everyone has the same goal: they want to learn more. Offering your insights, tips and tricks often turns into a great presentation with a lot of discussion
- Many people in our user groups are new to MongoDB, while others are vetrans and have years of experience under their belt but are interested in expanding their knowledge base. It's sometimes a good idea to ask the user group organizer about the experience level of their members so you can cater your presentation their interests.
Some great topics for a MongoDB User Group (with some examples)
- MongoDB in the Cloud
- Growing MongoDB on Amazon Web Services
- MongoDB on AWS
- Monitoring Your MongoDB Deployment
- How I use MongoDB in Production
- Krossover + MongoDB
*Fiesta.cc + MongoDB
- Inside Wordnik's Architecture
- MongoDB in a Specific Language Library
- MongoDB and PHP
- Getting Started with MongoDB and Scala
- MongoDB and Big Data
( SQL, NoSQL and Big data Architecture , by Venu Anuganti
- MongoDB on the JVM
Want to get your feet wet? Offer to give a 5-10 minute lightening talk or demo of a MongoDB tool to build up your presentation skills.
Slides
- Be precise in your slides - Most user group organizers make slides available online after the user group, so make sure they are correct and to the point.
- Be visual - a clever picture, easy to read chart, or even simple bullet points convey clear information.
- Use Big Font! Some meeting rooms are large and it is always hard to see from the back of the room
- Avoid including full text such as sentences and paragraphs in your slides. This makes it difficult for people to pay attention to your thoughts and expertise. You should be the center of the presentation, the slides should be there to guide you.
- Know your audience -The audience is very technical, and generally knowledgeable about MongoDB and related technologies. They are interested in hearing your insights and experience so they can become better MongoDB developers.
Some great resources to help you build well-designed slides:
- Duarte have great insight into presentation design and storytelling. Check out their blog for weekly tips and their Tools for Revolutionaries with free video guides to reworking your presentations.
Logistics
- Ask the organizer what time you should arrive (also be courteous and arrive on time)
- Make sure your computer or presentation will be compatible with the presentation setup available at the meetup group. Ask the organizer to make sure you have the correct connecting equipment. If you need a different adaptor for your laptop, please try to bring it with you.
- Send you presentations to the organizer so they can distribute it with the group. It's great to share this information
- Internet connectivity: wifi can be tedious in some places. To avoid any painful situations with wifi, try to make any demos in your presentations available offline.
- Invite your friends! It's always fun to bring along friends, family and coworkers to a user group--but be sure to check with the organizer to ensure the meeting location has enough capacity.