TUCS will be running a lightning talks session on Friday May 29. This is an opportunity for members of the society (and the general public) to give a 3-minute talk on any topic they like, with or without the aid of slides.
People who give presentations will be eligible for bonus TUCS POINTS SCHEME Points, and it’s entirely possible that there will be prizes awarded for good talks!
What are Lightning Talks?
Lightning talks are a common feature of computing/IT-related conferences: attendees volunteer to give a short talk, at short notice. These talks are given in lightning talk sessions, which can be topic restricted (e.g. a “Python” lightning talks session), or can be general. At linux.conf.au, the general lightning talks session concludes the conference, held in the keynote venue, presented in front of all (~800) delegates.
TUCS is ran its first Lightning Talks session in 2008, as a way of concluding our first series of Tech Talks.
If you want to get a feel for what a Lightning Talks session is like, LCA2008’s was most excellent, and can be downloaded from this link (on AARNet, so should be super-quick from on campus). Unfortunately, TUCS’ 2008 Lightning Talks were not recorded, so you can’t sample them here.
Registration/More Info
Registrations for talks open today, so if you’re interested in finding out more information, or would like to sign up for a talk, find Chris Neugebauer in the Mac Lab (room 376, Centenary Building), or send an e-mail to tucs-exec@tucs.org.au.
Current Line-up
Here’s a list of people who’ve signed up for talks so far (note please that this isn’t the final order for presentations on the day — see rule 7 for details.):
- Paris Buttfield-Addison: The Power of Fist. Thank you. That is all.
- Alex Berry: An Alternative to IPv6
- Michael Ford: Thrust
- Thomas Karpiniec: “What time is it, Eccles?” An Introduction to Network Time Protocol
- Josh Deprez: Abusing the Banach-Tarski Paradox for Fun and Profit
- Chris Neugebauer: Cocomo: An Accessible Mac API for Maclabbers.
- Andrew Bennett: The Grand Wizard
- Nic Wittison: The Internet: A brief History of Meme.
- Simon Arneaud: Magical Girl Anime as a Means of Self-induced Brain Damage
- Matthew D’Orazio: Why computers don’t work.
- Tim Nugent: Warbl Whizzle and other as-yet unconfirmed things.
- John Haight: ACS Spiel
- Jon Manning: Unity
- Peter Lyle: OpenTTD Signals
Rules of the event
In these rules, “The Talks Organiser” is Chris Neugebauer.
- Talks will last three minutes at maximum. This will be strictly enforced (possibly via manual intervention!)
- Talks must be registered (with a topic) with the Talks organiser, before the talks session begins — preferably before 12:30PM, May 29, if you want to use slides.
- There will be time for at most 15 talks, the first registered talks will be the ones presented.
- Slides may be used: They must be in PDF format (no exceptions!) with no scripts or embedded active components (e.g. motion video or audio), and e-mailed to (and viewable by) the organiser by 12:30PM, Friday 29 May.
- There is no rule 5.
- Talk topics and content should be suitable for a general audience: in particular, content of violent or pornographic nature will not be tolerated. If you’re not sure, ask.
- The order of talks will not be those listed above: a random order of talks will be selected on the day.
- Only one talk on any given topic will be accepted.
- Only one talk by any given person will be accepted.
