KiCon 2019, a KiCad user conference

I see you have already booked some A-list personalities. Have you tried tapping any of the regular Forum contributors, asking "Hey, would you be willing to talk about . . . . "? Or, maybe some Forum member would nominate a potential presenter here in this thread.

Dale

It will be $50 - $150. But we will also have hardship tickets (students) and volunteer opportunities (no cost).

My expectation is that travel will be the predominant cost for most attendees to this conference (unless they live close by)

Oh man, wish I could attend this. I don’t suppose travel funding for speakers is likely to be in the budget though?

Depends on how many tickets you can sell? :wink:

Not currently in the plan, if we can bring on more sponsors we can see what we can do.

This is so exciting. Looking forward to making it there in April.

Does anyone know what’s considered to be a good length for a talk?

I’m thinking of doing one on why I use KiCad for Atex Electronics.

It always depends on what you want to convey. Some talks get boring after 15mins but others are still worth listening to after 50+mins.

Talk to a mirror or better still record your self and watch it back. Hearing your self will give you a good indication of how good your talk is. (don’t force a particular length if you have the freedom to choose. Some length will show itself naturally after a bit of training.)

@ChrisGammell could probably give more insight. I don’t know what the format of the thing will be. Will this be a ‘one room’ thing or will they be offering a couple venues and giving choices? If that’s the case you might need to come up with an hour or perhaps share time with someone giving a similar talk.

Somewhere from 5 to 25 minutes.

The presentation as well as the questions it will prompt.

Hello Chris:

Something to consider is is a morning/day for training for a new user. I am a heavy Altium user and have been keeping an eye on Kicad but it is very expensive (in time) to learn the workflow. It would be efficient to have a day to see the workflow (create symbol, map 3d models, library management, schematic entry, pcb layout, documentation prep, etc). from someone who is skilled who could answer questions.

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Hey Eli!

We had actually talked about doing something like that. You’d prefer in person to the online tutorials that are out there?

Do you know of a great online tutorial series for version 5?

Getting a visa to come is painful from many countries.

Are there plans to record and post the lectures/seminars to YouTube or something for those poor unfortunate souls that are unable to attend ?

Yes, if there are experts on hand the ability to interact can be useful.

I am hopeful that Shawn Hymel will update/redo his step-by-step 10 part tutorial series for KiCad 4.7 to be applicable to 5.1. I used his video series for my first PCB and everything went very smoothly for me. Without his videos I think it would have been more of an uphill battle for me.

Try Dr. Peter Dalmaris’s “KiCad Like a Pro 2nd edition”. He covers KiCad 5.0 using a Linux OS and his “recipes” are great. It’s not free but it doesn’t cost that much either, I paid US$9.99.
–Larry

@morganfeldon Have you not seen Shawn Hymel’s new v5 series on DigiKey?
https://www.digikey.co.uk/en/resources/design-tools/kicad

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