Lightning Talk

A Lightning Talk is a short presentation given at a conference or similar forum. Unlike other presentations, lightning talks last only a few minutes and several will usually be delivered in a single period by different speakers.

History and format

Lightning Talks may have originated at the Python conference in 1997cite web| url=http://python.org/workshops/1997-10/shorties.html | title=Wanted: Short Talks | accessdate=2008-03-20] , where they were simply called short talks. The term "lightning" was first used for a similar session of short talks at the YAPC 19100 Conference in June 2000 cite web|url=http://perl.plover.com/lt/talks-2000.html | title=Talks that were presented at YAPC 19100 | accessdate=2007-01-27] and gradually spread to other technical conferences.

Formats vary between venues. Most conferences will assign a speaking slot (30 to 90 minutes) to them and arrange several talks one after the other during the session.

The length of talks are usually between 1 and 10 minutes with a 5 minute limit being common. In order to allow rapid changes between speakers, slides may either be discouraged or a single computer running a Presentation program (such as OpenOffice.org Impress or Microsoft PowerPoint) is used by all speakers.

ee also

* Pecha Kucha — A similar presentation format.
* Ignite - a similar presentation format

References

Links

* [http://perl.plover.com/lt/osc2003/lightning-talks.html What are Lightning Talks?]
* [http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/07/30/lightningtalk.html Giving Lightning Talks]