This document provides advice for giving successful lightning talks based on the experience of presenting the Appium automation tool at the Selenium Conf 2012. It recommends using screenshots and videos rather than live demos, keeping presentations fast-paced and targeted to the intended audience, prioritizing key information given the time constraint, and accepting that projects may evolve beyond the presenter's original plans once released as open source.

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How to Give a Successful
Lightning Talk
Appium
A Selenium Conf. 2012 Success Story
Dan Cuellar – Lead Software Engineer - Zoosk

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What was Appium in April 2012?
 controlled iOS apps with Selenium-like syntax
 did not require any modifications to your application
 used sanctioned Automation APIs
 Supported real-time debugging of iOS automation

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A Timeline for Appium
 October 2011
 Wrote the first version of Appium
 April 2012
 Presented Appium as SeConf 2012 Lightning Talk
 August 2012
 Explained Appium to Jason Huggins at a bar in SF
 November 2012
 Appium is presented at Mobile Test Summit
 January 2013
 Current Appium project is started on GitHub

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Appium Today
 Open Source Project with a vibrant development community
 300+ GitHub Stars, 150+ Forks
 Over 700 Issues Closed
 1000’s of Commits
 All in just 5 months
 Supports Android, iOS, FirefoxOS, Mobile Safari, & Mobile
Chrome
 Windows and Mac GUIs
 Record and Playback Interface & Graphical Inspector
 Runs in the Cloud (SauceLabs.com)
 Controls Robots

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Advice for Lightning-Talkers

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#1 Screenshots and Videos Are
Better Than Live Demos
 You have 5 minutes, if something goes wrong
 You will look dumb
 You will run out of time
 No one will get to see your awesome thing
 Pre-recording will help keep your presentation on time and on
track

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#2 Keep It Moving
 5 F*#$in minutes!!!
 No time for applause or laughter
 Talk Fast

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#3 Target Your Message
 Explain what you want (in my case, that was contributors)
and appeal to a particular audience.
 Speak their language. Hint: It’s not C#.
 “My goal was always to get someone drunk
and have them take over my project.”
– Jason Huggins (on Simon Stewart & Selenium)
 “I got drunk and someone took over my project.”
– Dan Cuellar (on Jason Huggins & Appium)
 ;-)
Appium Sugardaddy
Jason Huggins

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#4 Limit Your Content
 Once again, only 5 minutes
 Prioritize and think about what’s important
 I have a tool that can automate iOS
 It doesn’t require any modification to your app
 You can even use selenium like syntax with it
 And of course, it works, look at these awesome screenshots and
videos
 Lightning talks are not the time to reinvent the universe, and
you probably won’t have time to explain how you reinvented it
anyways

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#5 Be Prepared To Lose Control
 Once it’s out there, people are going to do whatever they want
with it. It’s open source!
 Appium has been ported 3 times
 Python  C#  Python  NodeJS
 Appium has changed names 3 times
 iOSAuto  AppleCart  Appium
 At one point, I lost the commit bit on my own project
 One day, a website cropped up with a logo and a twitter handle

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More Info
 Come to UnConference Talk (Too Hot For Track A!)
 10:25am tomorrow (Track B)
 Jason Carr (SauceLabs) & Me
 Web
 http://appium.io
 GitHub
 http://github.com/appium/appium
 Google Discussion Group
 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/appium-discuss
 Twitter
 @appiumdevs