Topic

A CocoaHeadsNYC presentation should be about Cocoa or iOS programming. It should generally be about technical nuts and bolts, with a bit of leeway for tangential topics. It should not be a marketing or recruiting pitch.

Examples of good topics would be:

• Demystifying an API. You could be an expert on this API, or it could be something you just learned about and think is neat.
• Show-and-tell of an app you're working on. This could be a polished product or a half-finished hobby app. Please don't make this a sales pitch. Rather, we'd like to learn about (and perhaps critique) the programming techniques you used and the design decisions you made.
• Tips and tricks for using a developer tool, whether Xcode or a third-party utility.

For more examples, check out recaps, slides, and in some cases video from past presentations at CocoaHeadsNYC.org.

Length

The length of your presentation is up to you. It depends on how much you'd like to say and how much time and effort you can spend to prepare.

A good length would be around 30 minutes, give or take. We can fit two shorter talks or one more extended talk. It would also be nice to see an occasional 5-10 minute "blitz" talk.

Tone

Talks can be as polished or as casual as you feel comfortable with. It's not like you'll be taking the stage at WWDC, with the eyes of the world upon you. You'll be in a conference room with 15-20 friendly and forgiving geeks. The main thing is that the topic be something you find interesting and that you think would help us be better developers.

Feel free to use CocoaHeadsNYC to rehearse a talk that you plan to give elsewhere, or conversely to reprise a talk that you've already given elsewhere.

How to volunteer

If you'd like to speak, email me (Natalie Podrazik) at npodrazik(a)gmail.com. Let me know what you want to talk about and how much time you'd like, and whether you'll be bringing your own laptop or iPad to present from or would prefer to borrow one.

Meetings are held in a conference room generously provided by Google. (Details here.) In most cases, it should be trivial to connect you to the big-screen projector.

At dinner afterwards, the group will chip in for one person's share of the bill. If you're the only speaker, you'll eat for free. If there are two speakers, you'll each eat for half.

If you wouldn't mind sharing your slides and sample code, send them to me and I'll post them online after the meeting.

I hope to hear from you!