I was given a great opportunity by Richard to host Test.bash(); earlier this year. I was not 100% sure if I could do a good job of it, but I wanted to take it up as a learning and challenging task. I was not worried about it at all until one week before the event!
My first tasks were to check the following:
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Time of the event
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What time I was supposed to host
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Names of speakers I was hosting
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Get some information before the event about the speakers, sponsors, and hosts
This was my little R&D situation worth one week. Furthermore, I was thinking about the “oomph” I could add as a host, apart from wearing my MOT t-shirt and displaying some lovely MOT-branded posts on my newly painted wall 
The day before the event, it occurred to me that I'd like to crack some jokes while I hosted. I figured these should be techy style jokes and so I decided to research them on dear Google.
Some of the jokes I cracked were:
- How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? None. It's a hardware problem.
- Why was 'beef stew' not used as a computer password? Because it was not strong-anoff.
- What did the computer have during his break time? He had a byte!
- What kind of computer sings the best? A Dell.
- What was the spider doing on the computer? He was making a web-site!
The feedback was great for the jokes too! Some people actually got involved in answering the jokes before I gave away the answers, some scoffed at my “dad jokes,” and some loved them. But I came away confident that it had been a fun-filled hosting session.
In terms of hosting the speakers, I genuinely enjoyed welcoming them onto the stage, speaking to them, and creating some great conversations. The talks were very insightful and contained loads of new things for me to learn. As I hosted, I kept opening tabs to look at the tools mentioned by the speakers to go back and learn about them. I also made sure to say how much I appreciated the speakers, since they had worked hard on their respective talks and I wanted to put them more at ease if they were nervous. I had a great time with the speakers and even got to meet Sergio Freire’s little pet bird!
Suggestions to future hosts :
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Brief your speaker in full about your event
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Try to make their experience as stress-free and comfortable as you can
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Assign a point person to your speaker
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Make your speaker feel welcome
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Before the event, make sure you have familiarised yourself with their bio and have planned an introduction that will make the audience excited to listen to them
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After their talk, thank them and encourage the audience to ask them questions
All in all I loved the experience of hosting. And I got tons of messages after the event telling me that I did a great job. I would love to keep helping the Ministry of Testing whenever I can … and come up with better jokes too to make all of the audience laugh :).
