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 [edit]

Lightning talks may have originated at the Python conference in 1997,^[1] where they were simply called short talks. The term "lightning talk" was first coined by Mark Jason Dominus for a similar session at the YAPC 19100 Conference (Yet Another Perl Conference) in June 2000^[2][3] 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 is used by all speakers.

The term data blitz is sometimes used to refer to a session of lightning talks, particularly at academic conferences in the sciences and social sciences such as the annual conference of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology.^[4]

See also [edit]

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

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• What are Lightning Talks?
• Giving Lightning Talks