The European Investigative Journalism Conference

Speakers’ Corner

Are you going to be a speaker or panelist at the Dataharvest Digital? Rest assured; we will guide you through every step of online conferencing, and one or two from the Dataharvest team will participate in all sessions to troubleshoot, read the chat and Q&A etc.

Make sure to get in touch with the moderator some days before the session to settle the details of the presentation.

Our conference system for presentations is Edudip. It is browser-based, so you don’t need a profile or password. Please find a tutorial for speakers here. For data skills training and Thursday bars, we use BigBlueButton – please find a tutorial for speakers here.

Here are some tips for a succesful presentation:

  • You want your message to go through loud and clear – and many listeners are not native English speaker (maybe you are neither). Talk clearly and not too fast!
  • Get in touch with the moderator and, if relevant, other panelists well before the session to discuss and plan the session.
  • Map the session – usually 3-4 parts of 10-15 minutes with time in between for Q&A work well.
  • Slides should be simpler and with fewer words than for an in-presence session. Slides and videos must be uploaded before the session (and tested!).
  • Attract participants – share your session on social media!

To make the best appearance online:

  • Place yourself against a neutral background
  • Make sure that there is light on your face (don’t have a window behind you)
  • Make sure that the camera is at eye level (if you use the laptop camera, put books under the laptop – otherwise we see your nostrils or double chin)
  • Don’t be too close to the camera
  • Don’t dress in white – it steals light and looks dirtier than it is

Technicalities to make the session run smoothly:

  • Use a wired connection instead of WiFi if possible. Try to avoid mobile connections (if you have no other possibility make sure to use LTE/4G and that the connection is fast enough). Test your internet connection – you need 4 Mbps both up and down for a reliable connection, preferably more.   
  • Test your microphone and sound. Please use a headset, preferably with a bow and fixed microphone (wire headsets with microphones tend to pick up noise from touching your clothes). Cable headsets are more reliable than Bluetooth headsets.
  • Please contact us a couple of days before the session starts to get an short introduction to our tools and test everything.
  • Send your presentation slides and other material to the moderator before the session to be uploaded (as PDF documents).
  • If you  are going to show slides or video during the session, they should be uploaded to the session beforehand (as PDF). Videos need to be uploaded to Youtube to be shown.
  • You can also share your screen. Please lower the resolution of your screen beforehand to 1024×768 pixels (or smaller) and share only single windows whenever possible (screen sharing costs a lot of bandwidth and the screen is displayed smaller on the attendee’s screen. The sound will not be shared – if you want to show videos please check the point above.