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Writing a Great Session Abstract
In previous posts, I’ve talked about getting started with community speaking and how to set up your sessionize profile – today, we’re going to look at how you write a great session abstract. First of all though, it’s helpful to understand why a good session abstract is important. A good session abstract should help you stand out as a speaker when responding to calls for content – it is your opportunity to effectively communicate the unique value and relevance of your proposed session to the conference organizers. A strong abstract can effectively communicate the unique perspectives, insights, and solutions that you will share during the session. It should clearly articulate…
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How to Create Your Sessionize Profile
Last week, I wrote about how to get started with community speaking, and today, we’re going to build on that, with a guide to setting up your Sessionize profile for new speakers. This is quite a long article, so use the following buttons if you want to navigate quickly to a different part of this page: Set up your profile Add your first session Examples of Profiles What is Sessionize? Sessionize is a platform that is used by event organisers around the world to run and manage calls for speakers / content. For organisers, it provide a comprehensive set of tools that make it easy to review content, to pull…
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Getting Started with Community Speaking
Within the Microsoft tech community, we have some fantastic speakers, but I’m really keen to support new speakers who are just getting started with community speaking. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been to so many events where I’ve seen lots of the same people time and time again. On the one hand, this is fantastic as I’ve made so many good friends, and every event feels like a reunion – an opportunity to reconnect, to strengthen relationships with the people I’ve already met. However, it is important that experienced speakers are able to support the development and progression of new talent – and ideally from a diverse background!…
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Zoe 365 Reflections on 2022
2022 saw big career changes The start of the new year is a good time to reflect and look back on 2022, including all the wonderful moments, the highs, the lows and everything in between. It feels like sharing my reflections on Zoe 365 is a good place to start the new calendar year. 2022 was a strange year for me, as it saw me change roles for the first time in 5 years – which wasn’t on my radar at the start of the year. I spent 5 years working for Agilisys, and during my time there I worked in multiple roles, with a huge group of absolutely fantastic…
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Improving Diversity Within Our Community
How do we drive more diversity within our tech community? This is a subject near and dear to my heart. Being a woman working in the tech industry, I’ve come up against my fair share of challenges throughout the years, and even now, there are many situations where I’m the only woman in a room or a meeting. Over the last 6 or 7 years, I’ve interviewed over 150 candidates for technical roles, and I can count the number of women that I interviewed during this time on both hands. So from a gender perspective, there is the issue of not having enough women who are staying the distance to…