Guest Presenters are usually core developers or owners of an open source project but they can also be coders that use the project and know it well enough to present code and help viewers understand what the code is doing at given points.
RTS distributes content through our YouTube Channel, rss feed, iTunes Screencasts, and other media channels that are free of charge for users. No one is, or ever will be, charged for standard RTS episodes. We are dedicated to helping software developers understand the technologies we use to build software in the 21st century.
Guest Presentors are expected to deliver quality video that viewers can easily consume through our video channel. This means we need a few guidelines and rules in order to effectively deliver this content.
Christian Smith (Founder and CEO of Anvil Research) and Erik Isaksen (Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies) met on LinkedIn forums answering and asking several questions about Node.js and several JavaScript frameworks like AngularJS. Christian and Erik started pair programming on Angular projects and noted several problems they were having in their code at the framework level.
Christian and Erik decided to step through the Angular source code in the developer tools to find out what was happening. After the issues were resolved, they realized that other developers also had similar issues and could benefit by a live walkthrough of the code. Before long the two had a monthly meeting with several other developers where they took pieces of existing codebases and walked through the code step by step.
A few key factors go into making a great presentation for RTS. First, we need to find code in the open source project that could be discussed in detail over the course of 45 minutes to an hour. Remember that this is a visual and auditory experience and quickly running through code without explanation can be frustrating.
Additionally, the code shown on RTS should have a beginning, middle, and end. Think of it as storytelling; you are are guiding viewers through an onboarding anatomy of a piece of code. What does that code do? Where does it do it? How does it do it? Why does it do it? Every codebase has a story. What is that story? Know your codebase and it's story.
- Show actual code. Not conceptual or eventual code but code that exists now
- Create an outline for what you are going to talk about
- Use a simple slide deck with 10 or fewer slides and minimal text description
- Create and demo working code examples (we recommend prerecording these as animated gifs or video)
- Plan out timing for slides transitions and code demos
- Communicate with the RTS team so we can assist if you have questions
- Do not use the computer speakers to avoid feedback
- Note that if you use earbuds that have a mic they can make scratch sounds if the mic touches something like a beard
- Adjust your resolution to 1024 x 768
- Use sans-serif fonts for on screen material that is readable and at least 28pt in size
We require that all guests presenting send us or share in some fashion their code and presentation materials as well as an outline of the presentation and timing. We are happy to assist in the creation of this material if you need it. Outlines can be on anything from keynote to paper napkins ( take a photo or scan to share) and the material should be descriptive but doesn't need to be a book. A simple slide show with 5 slides with single short sentences and a few links is fine. Simple Content quality over verbose content documentation is preferred. We know it's a lot of work so ask us for tips and help as needed
We are dedicated to helping you create great content for the Open Source community so we want and need to help review your content at least one week prior to our recording. We will help edit copy and we can optionally do a 15, 30 or 60 minute hangout where we can review, assist and practice with you.