Thanks for your interest in speaking at Columbus Digital Analytics Wednesday!
We welcome seasoned speakers as well as first-timers; it’s all of our community! Anyone willing to put in the work on a relevant topic can be a speaker, though we do have a limited number of slots and set ideas about what topics we want to see — so bookings are at the discretion of the organizers.
Before the event
Please provide us with:
- A short description and prospective title of your talk (a couple paragraphs).
- A bio, headshot, and anything else you’d like us to say about you.
The further ahead of the event you can provide us this info the better! We typically open for registration 1 month prior to the event and ideally would like this info at that time. We will work with you to refine the title & description to tailor to our audience as needed.
Please don’t be shy about sharing our promotional materials or anything else you’d like to say about your talk to your own network. We’ll do promotion for you as well, but let people know what you’re up to!
Preparing your talk
Talks should:
- Be 30-40 minutes in length.
- Not be a sales pitch! Mentioning products and tools (even if they are yours) are fine, but try and keep it non-commercial.
- Provide the audience with something relevant to them, maybe even something practical they could implement.
- Be accessible to an audience of mixed levels of technical expertise. If you have a more technical talk, some limited sample code can be good, but not all attendees will follow it.
If you’re unsure about the content of your talk — feel free to reach out beforehand to any of the organizers for feedback, we’ll be happy to help! Looking for a site with some tips? Check out speaking.io.
Data & Analytics Wednesday is a welcoming and inclusive event, so please be mindful of the material you use or discuss. No sexual imagery, racism, sexism, exclusionary “jokes,” etc. We expect speakers to follow our code of conduct the same as any other attendee or organizer.
Day of the event
We usually meet at Rev1 (1275 Kinnear Rd., Columbus) following this rough schedule:
6:30-7:00 – Food, drink, and general socializing.
7:00-7:10 – Opening remarks, organizational stuff.
7:10-8:00 – Talk, audience q & a.
8:00-8:30 – More social time, possible exhortations to take home food and/or drink.
Things are pretty informal, so that schedule may vary. Please try and show up by 6:30 so you have some time to make sure the A/V is working for you.
Rev1 has good A/V capabilities including a Macintosh at the podium, multiple types of display connectors for your own laptop, and available wifi.
Attendance generally ranges from 30 to 80 people. The audience is a mix of analysts (digital, data, etc.), marketers, students, and others. The exact makeup will depend a lot on the description of your talk, so the more details you can provide for that the better the match for attendees will be!
Post-event
We typically create “recaps” of the events, so if you can provide slides or other materials for us to post after your talk that is greatly appreciated. If your employer won’t allow that that’s ok too. Again, we encourage you to share this with your own network as well.