All slides go to heaven

Whenever I come to an event like the Mozilla All Hands, I’m hugely inspired by what I see and hear. Many of the presentations that kicked off Monday’s keynote, for example, contained specific examples of

  • language that I want to remember and use.
  • slides that illustrate concepts I’m struggling to get across in my own work.
  • assets, imagery and references to tools that can help me do my job better.

The challenge is that much of this great material can easily disappear into the ether afterwards. It’s hard to quickly put your hands on it once you return to work. That’s a shame, because these events are an opportunity to take new messages, ideas and assets and run with them quickly. There’s so much awesome on offer here — let’s add the “share” buttons?

Three random suggestions for our next All Hands

  1. Record and publicly archive everything. Especially the keynote presentations.
  2. Ensure all slide presentations include a URL for public sharing.
  3. Transcribe and post key speeches.

I’d love it if we could ensure that all the keynotes and slide decks were linked off the wiki. That way everything we see and hear can be quickly grabbed and re-purposed, amplified, or leveraged in our own work faster and more easily.  Another useful convention might be to ensure every slide deck includes a URL on the title page or footer for the online version. That way everything we do becomes a shareable tool or asset, instead of just a temporary communications exercise.

Enabling community participation and going faster are (sometimes?) the same thing

Gerv’s question on Monday about opening and archiving these meetings for the community speaks to the same issue. That will not only makes us more accessible to our community — but also help us do our own jobs faster and easier. In this case, they’re one and the same thing. Let’s ensure our all our hard work, ideas — and slides — make it on the train! 🙂

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