LDSPMA

Empowering Latter-day Saints to spread light and truth by connecting them at the intersection of faith, creativity, and professional skill

Speaker Resources

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Conference Overview

  • The 2024 LDSPMA Conference will be held October 17–19, 2024, at the Sorensen Student Center at Utah Valley University (Orem, Utah). The conference consists of several parts:
    • September–October: Preconference virtual classes. These are 50-minute Zoom presentations to a live virtual audience and are included as part of the conference package.
    • Thursday, October 17:
      • Deep-dive, 4-hour workshops
      • Publishing Summit classes and seminars (new to 2024)
    • Friday–Saturday, October 18–19:
      • 50-minute breakout sessions in 8 tracks
      • Keynote sessions, interactive sessions, Fast Pitch, mass book signing, and other conference events
  • The Friday–Saturday breakout sessions and the preconference classes are divided into the following tracks:
    • Fiction Writing (including how to get published or self-publish)
    • Nonfiction Writing (including how to get published or self-publish)
    • Musical Arts
    • Visual Arts (including graphic design, illustration, and fine art)
    • Media (including podcasting, short video content, and screenwriting)
    • Editing, Design, and Production (sessions meant for editors, designers, etc., NOT for authors)
    • Marketing
    • Business, Leadership, Finance, and Entrepreneurship (NEW this year)
  • Each breakout session and preconference class is 50 minutes, including time for Q&A.
  • Breakout sessions and preconference classes are recorded, with the recordings and slides made available to attendees for several months following the conference.

Expectations of Presenters

Presenters are expected to:

  • Prepare and deliver a high-quality, professional session.
  • In the months before the conference, share about the LDSPMA Conference through word-of-mouth, email, or social media. (We will provide each speaker with a general-purpose media kit and with social media graphics specific to their session.)
  • Submit slides in advance for review and feedback.
  • Share their slides with us afterward to be posted for attendees alongside the recording of their session on our website.

What We Are Looking For

We want a blend of sessions that cover the craft/how-to side, sessions that cover the business/production/marketing side, and sessions that cover the faith/mindset/ethics side of the creation and publication process. We also seek for a blend of beginner, intermediate, and advanced topics.

High-quality sessions usually have the following:

  • Specific, expert, and actionable information
  • Examples drawn from your career and work
  • Illustrative metrics and data, where possible
  • Advanced information for those already familiar with the basics of the topic
  • Tie-ins to principles and doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as appropriate
  • Engagement with the audience through questions, exercises, humor, etc.
  • Handouts listing specific resources or takeaways (if applicable)

What We Are NOT Looking For

  • General inspirational sessions that are not relevant to a particular track (see list above)
  • Turning the session into an infomercial on your latest workshop/program/book
  • Generic information or advice that has been said before or that is easily findable on the web
  • Reading text off of a slide deck for your entire presentation
  • Advice that is vague, general, basic, outdated, or unstructured
  • Slides that have small type, excessive text, or poor color contrast

Benefits of Speaking

As compensation, speakers receive free access to our conference, including the keynote sessions, breakout classes, lunches, pitch sessions, and networking opportunities. With over 80 other presenters, panelists, and other experts at the conference, attending is a wonderful way to connect with peers or potential collaborators.

Speakers also will receive heavily discounted offers for program ads, hallway exhibit tables, and tables at the Mass Book and Media Signing.

If you need your speaker registration code re-sent to you, email us at conference@ldpsma.org. You can register here.

Speaker Best Practices

LDSPMA-Speaker-Best-PracticesDownload

Key Information for 2024

Quick Links:

PDF Version:

Presenter-Information-Sheet-2023-LDSPMA-ConferenceDownload

Dress

Please wear business casual or business formal. Attendees will be in business casual.

Address

UVU Sorensen Student Center (800 W University Pkwy, Orem, UT 84097).

Please arrive at least 30 minutes before your session to allow time for parking and check-in.

Parking

  • Free parking: All of UVU’s yellow-permit parking lots are free (because of UVU’s fall break)—see yellow lots in map below.
  • Paid parking: The UVU Parking Garage (red rectangle in map below) is the closest parking to the Sorensen Center. It is normally $10/day, but we have negotiated a special rate of $5/day. After you park, note your parking space number and pay at the kiosk by the elevators. The parking garage will let you onto the 2nd floor of the Student Life Building. From there, take a left to get to the Sorensen Student Center.
  • Public transit: The UVX (Utah Valley Express) bus line has a station on the south side of UVU campus. This free bus line has service every 15 minutes from 6:45 am to 10:45 pm and connects the Orem Frontrunner (light rail) station, UVU, University Mall, BYU, downtown Provo, and the Provo Frontrunner station. See UVX schedule.

Check-In

The registration desk is in The Commons on the first floor of the Sorensen Student Center:

There you will receive your name tag, lanyard, conference tote bag, and program booklet. Your name badge will come with a presenter ribbon.

Thank-You Gift

We have a special thank-you gift for each presenter! Please pick it up at some point from the registration desk.

Green Room

Room 213-c, on the second floor, is reserved for speakers to use as a green room: 

Room 213-c will have chairs, tables, snacks, and water bottles. You can use this room to take a break, prepare for your presentation, or store supplies that you don’t want to carry around all day. (If you store things in here, please label them clearly, and do not leave valuables.)

Schedule

You are welcome to stay for as much of the conference as you’d like, including lunches both days. The conference runs from 8:15 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. both days. 

See the full conference schedule for the day, time, and room number of your presentation.

Session Information

Room Facilitator

There will be a volunteer room facilitator in your room ready to help you set up your presentation, distribute handouts, etc.

Session Length

Your presentation lasts 50 minutes. You are responsible for starting your own session and introducing yourself. 

There will not be any bell to mark the end of the session. Your room facilitator will hold up 10-minute, 5-minute, and 1-minute cards to help you stay on track.

It is important that you end on time (at the X:50 mark) because there are only 10 minutes between your class and the following breakout sessions or general session.

Q&A During Presentations

We encourage you to leave 10 minutes for Q&A, or intersperse it throughout your session.

PowerPoint Do’s and Don’ts

  • Don’t have small text (20 pts or less is too small)
  • Don’t have a lot of text on one slide. Break it up.
  • Don’t overlay text on top of an image or busy background
  • Don’t put text close to the bottom of the slide (in case you, the podium, or someone’s head blocks a person’s view)
  • White text on a black background is easier on the eyes (and our cameras) than black text on a white background.
  • DO make sure there is strong color contrast between text color and background color.
  • DO have amazing, helpful, and relevant information! (Of course you will 🙂

Referencing Faith and Testimony

Our conference is unique in that it explicitly combines professional development with the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Please feel free to tie in quotes from the scriptures and prophets, share spiritual experiences related to your work, etc.

Self-Promotion Etiquette

Excessive self-promotion (of your coaching services, latest book, online course, etc.) is off-putting to attendees and damaging to your credibility. If you have a resource/workshop/class that is related to your topic, a brief mention at the end of your class is sufficient. Offering attendees a special discount for that product is okay, as long as the mention is, again, brief. (Offering a free digital resource, handout, or download is just fine.)

Recordings

We will be recording each breakout session. There will be a camera and camera operator in the back of the room. Make sure they are rolling before you begin your session. For the sake of the recording, be sure to repeat any questions that are asked so they are captured by the microphone.

Recordings will be made available to conference attendees and presenters from mid-November 2024 through February 2025. We will send you instructions for accessing the recordings following the conference.

Technology

Microphone

For presenters in rooms 208 (Media Track) and 206-G/H (Visual Arts Track):

Your room will have a lapel (lavalier) mic. Please put the mic on and verify that it’s turned on before beginning your session. This mic is capturing audio for our camera recording and is not connected to the room’s sound system.

For all other presenters:

Your room will have a wireless handheld mic on a stand. Please use this mic as you present, for two reasons: (1) It will feed into the room’s sound system, helping everyone hear you clearly, and (2) we are capturing this audio to use when we edit the session recording.

When an audience member asks a question, please repeat/summarize the question before answering it, so that the audio recording will catch what the question was (and because often other attendees couldn’t hear the question).

For panels, please pass the wireless handheld mic around to each panelist.

Guest WiFi

To access WiFi, click on the “Wolverine WiFi” option. You will be redirected to a WiFi registration page. Click the “Connect to Open Public Network” button.

Despite the presence of WiFi, we highly encourage you to play any slides or media off local files, in case you have trouble connecting to the internet. (For example, use PowerPoint instead of Google Slides, or use a local mp4 file instead of YouTube.)

Presenting Slides and Multimedia

Each room has either a large wall-mounted TV screen or a projector, with an HDMI cable for visual and audio input. Please bring your own laptop to show slides and multimedia. You will need either a laptop with an HDMI port, or the requisite adapter to connect your laptop to HDMI. 

HDMI Cable: 

Example adapter: HDMI to USB-C

HDMI Port:

If you have neither, please email us at media@ldspma.org to let us know, and send us any slides or media you plan on using. We will then arrange for a volunteer’s laptop to be in your room with the media loaded onto it.

Connecting Your Laptop

Once hooked up via the HDMI cord, find the touchscreen on the wall or podium to wake it up. Set the input source to HDMI. You can also adjust the volume here.

If you plan to play audio or video, test it before you begin your presentation.

Troubleshooting Sound

If the sound is playing from your device instead of through the room’s sound system, check the output setting on your computer:

  • Macs: Apple menu > System Settings > Sound > Output
  • PCs: Start menu > Settings > Sound > Output

Tech Help

Besides the room assistants, we will have a UVU tech person and several LDSPMA personnel circulating to help troubleshoot any tech issues.

If you want to test your tech set-up in advance, all the breakout session rooms will be open and unoccupied from 7 to 10 am each morning and during the lunch hour (12-1). You can also test your tech in the speaker green room, room 213-c.

Who To Contact the Day Of If You Have Any Problems or Questions

Jeremy Madsen (Operations Manager): 801-473-9540

Paul Schwartz (A/V and Camera Crew Manager): (801) 414-7125