As I mentioned in my post from early February (the one about “Beyond Tech Skills” podcast), I haven’t written many posts on my blog lately. This is because I’ve been preoccupied with all kinds of different things in recent weeks, and some of them are not directly related to my work. The podcast is one of them, and now I’m happy to announce another project I’ve been working on lately: The MASH Program.
MASH – Mentor and Speaker Hub
MASH stands for Mentor and Speaker Hub. As I speak quite a bit at conferences and am also part of organizing some (for BCOUG or as a committee member for abstract selection for several others), I would really like to see more speakers present, people I don’t know yet but can learn from. Making this community larger is something I would like to support, and this is my way of doing this.
The MASH program is here to support people who want to start speaking at tech conferences (or ones who started already but still need support). We are here to assist right from the beginning with choosing a title and writing an abstract, all the way to practicing the session until you are confident enough.
Sounds interesting? Go to the MASH program website for more info.
Who Are We?
The idea for this program was suggested by Mirela when she organized a conference for the Romanian Oracle Users Group. She suggested this in a private group we have and a few people immediately showed interest. The core team of the program is: Mirela Ardelean, Neil Chandler, Kim Berg Hansen, Samuel Nitsche, Erik van Roon and myself. Each has extensive experience in speaking and organizing conferences and we also realized that we represent many different languages and cultures (as each of us speaks a different native language and comes from a different country, even though all except me are from Europe).
The six of us gathered and started building a mentoring plan and a website to support the program, and just last week launched it officially.
We are coming from the Oracle world, involved with Oracle Users Groups and being part of the ACE Program, but the program is not limited to Oracle conferences or Oracle topic speakers. We can and would be happy to assist to any tech person in any field to get on the stage, there are so many things we can do together even if we are working with different technologies and fields.
How Does It Work?
It’s really easy! You go to the MASH Program website, and simply click on the “registration” menu item (or any other “register” button you will see on the website). This will take you to a form that you fill with as much details as you’d like (to help us understand who you are), and that’s it. We’ll get the form and be in touch.
How about the price? There is no price, it’s free! We are happy to do this, we all want to see more speakers and help the community grow. Our reward will be to see new speakers go on stage and present.
What Can You Do?
So what is the next step? If you are thinking about speaking at a tech conference and would like some support, register for the program. If you know someone that would like to speak, or someone that you think should speak, talk to them and introduce them to the program too.
As a last note I would like to thank Mirela for initiating the program, and the entire team for all the calls and work they have put into this. We are ready for the next stage now – help us to help you and the community.
