Lightning Talks

A Great Way to Teach and Learn

Lightning talks are a great way to share knowledge in your organization. Here's how to get started and get everyone to love them.

What's a Lightning Talk?

A Lightning Talk is a short 5-10 minute presentation on any topic followed by about 5 minutes of open Q&A. A common format for a lightning talk is 6 minutes for presenting and 4 minutes for Q&A. The goal of a lightning talk is always to share knowledge, but can also be to convince people of the benefits of something or to take a particular action. Basically, lightning talks are lightning-fast knowledge sharing.

What's the Benefit?

Ok, so we know what a lightning talk is, but what's the point of doing them? There are plenty of obvious benefits and some that aren't so obvious. The important thing is that everyone who participates, from the speaker to the audience to the organization all benefit. It's an all-around win-win situation.

Share Knowledge

The IT industry is a knowledge industry and the vast majority of us who work in IT are knowledge workers. It's our job to gain, handle, and use information and it's impossible to be an effective knowledge worker without the ability to share that knowledge with others. We all gain insights and learn new things on a regular basis as we work on our projects. It's important that the knowledge gained is passed on to everyone even if they're working on a different part of the project or team.

Besides people who directly need the knowledge, there are real benefits to sharing knowledge with people who might not obviously need to know it. Bringing people together for these low effort, structured knowledge sharing sessions is an easy way to break down barriers and foster interdisciplinary problem-solving. The insights others gain interacting with our clients is invaluable to me as a programmer. A productivity tool that I use in my day to day job might be useful for people in other departments. There are endless possibilities for conversations and ideas to spark when people get together to talk about what they know.

Brainstorm Ideas

If you've ever worked in a company where it wasn't easy for you to share ideas with superiors or other departments, you'll instantly see the benefit of getting together to make short presentations on topics that you choose. Presenting a lighting talk is perfect if you have an idea for a project and want to get feedback from other perspectives. It gives everyone in the organization an easy place to share their creativity, passion, and vision with others no matter what their role or the topic is. Learning new topics and mastering ones we care about is one of the top ways that knowledge workers stay happy and engaged.

On the flip side of the coin, there's a much higher likelihood that creative individuals will come up with new, interesting ideas and ways to solve problems when they're exposed to new perspectives. Maybe that lightning talk on home improvement will spark a metaphor for developing a product that I haven't thought of. Maybe that lightning talk on a side project will lead to a better understanding of the work project.

Practice Public Speaking

Unfortunately, programmers get a bad rap for having terrible social skills. It's not always true and I know that even the ones that don't have great skills are usually interested in getting better. Either way, you can't get better at public speaking without doing it even if you're terrified of getting on stage. Lightning talks are specifically designed to be short and informal so that there's as little pressure on the presenter as possible. The voluntary nature of presenting and attending the talks ensures that everyone is interested to hear what the speaker has to say and is invested in the talk's success. Better yet, the talks are informal without strict guidelines on materials or time limits so presenters can start as big or small as they want.

Grow Company Culture

Leaders have long since figured out that feeling connected to your organization is important for productivity and morale. Unfortunately, spending time outside of our work silos can be challenging. There's not usually time to interact with the different departments in our organizations on a daily basis. I'm sure we've all had to endure terrible "team-building" exercises that are attempting to connect us to our co-workers in a forced way. Organizing lightning talks is a solution that promotes an organic way for people to come together and connect with each other.

How Do I Get Started?

"Alright", you're saying "I'm sold, but how do I start lightning talks in my company?" The first thing to do is plan it all out.

Set Up the Framework

It's important to lay out the rules and structure of the talks. You'll want to make sure to at least answer these questions:

What's are the time constraints? You can be flexible on these if you and your organization approve of it, but I've found that it's easier to get management buy-in when you have a strict time slot. For instance, it's easier to say that this will take exactly 30 minutes on Friday afternoon than to get approval for an indeterminate amount of time and speakers. You'll always have a set schedule and by limiting the number of talks per session, there should be a few people who are in line to talk which makes planning and communicating the talks a lot easier.

What topics are ok? Ideally, this should be completely open-ended, but sometimes it helps convince people to sign up if you set up a theme for the session. For instance, one session can be "A Day in the Life" where people talk about what someone with their job does on a day to day basis at your organization. If you're having trouble with management buy-in, this can be another bargaining chip. If they know that the themes will keep people tangentially related to work, they might be more willing to get on board. I would try everything else before giving that freedom away though since some of the best talks I've heard had nothing to do with work.

Are the talks going to be recorded? If so, how? Some people like to record the talks on video so that other people can see them in the future if they missed them. This is a good way to keep records but can be a little off-putting for people who aren't comfortable with public speaking. Another option would be to upload any slide decks or notes that the presenter used. This is entirely up to you and your organization.

How will people sign up to speak? This should be something so easy that it can't possibly be a barrier to people who might want to speak. Don't require people to use any specific tool or communication to sign up. We used a shared spreadsheet that had the person's name and topic on there. Anything else as far as scheduling and theming sessions was up to the organizer and made it easy for others to just talk.

Get Approval

After laying out your plan and maybe even getting some volunteers, make sure you get approval from management. If you're interested in setting these up, you likely know the benefits of the talks and can articulate them well. If not, give a lightning talk about lightning talks and see what they think!

Stick With It

As the initial organizer, you need to make a concerted effort to stick with it and make sure that there are speakers and sessions on a regular basis. It should start to gain momentum and take on a life of its own after a few sessions. People genuinely enjoy learning and sharing with others in a relaxed environment like this. Hopefully, you can get a core group of people who can see the benefit and help keep things going. If you're not seeing the growth you'd like, don't be afraid to reach out and ask for help. Ask a senior figure to do a talk that would draw more of a crowd. Ask a few people you know around the organization to try and bring a few people to the next session. Visibility is key.

Let It Go

The last step is to let your baby go. As a developer, this is something I have to deal with regularly when changing the projects and features I'm working on. It's not an easy thing to let someone else take over something that you built, but it's a rewarding process for a few reasons. For one, if the talks have become a core part of your company culture, there's likely at least a little bit of overhead involved in keeping the schedule running. By letting it go, you're freeing up that time to work on other new initiatives that will hopefully be as successful as your lightning talks. Also, it's important to embody the purpose of the lightning talks and share the knowledge. Letting someone else in your organization gain leadership and organizational skills by running the talks is the perfect example of how to pass it on.