For Speakers

This document contains everything you need to know about attending React Finland as a speaker.

Venue - Paasitorni#

The conference will be held at Paasitorni, a historic building in Siltasaari, near the center of Helsinki. Paasitorni is a gorgeous Art Nouveau building that in past served as Worker's House.

From 12th to 14th, several meeting rooms will be used for the workshops. On 15th and 16th, the big congress hall will be the main conference location. For speakers, there is going to be a top floor speaker room during the conference. You will also have access to the tower on top of the building so you can see Helsinki from a good spot.

Hotel#

We'll book four nights (extra night per workshop) at a hotel based on your travel dates. This includes breakfast. The hotel is Scandic Paasi right next to the venue.

How to get to the hotel?#

If you take a taxi, save the receipt so we can reimburse you. There are several taxis in the airport, take reputable one like Taksi Helsinki. Note that it's not cheap, expect 50 euros. Another option would be to take the bus 600 from the airport and then leave it at the stop Hakaniemi as the hotel is right there.

Workshops#

The workshops will also be held at Paasitorni, but in smaller rooms. There will be lunch and two breaks with some pastries during the workshop day, so make sure to have breaks at that time. Breaks will be held at the restaurant an it will be an additional opportunity to mingle between the workshop participants.

Workshop hosts, if you want to send specific information to workshop attendees, let me (Juho) know and I'll do it through the ticket platform.

Giving the talk#

We've prepared a simple yet effective process for the talks. It works as follows:

Show up at the speakers' room about half an hour before the session of your talk. The speakers' room is at the top of the building so keep on climbing.
We'll guide you shortly before the session from the speakers' room to the great hall and do a quick tech check. If you want, you can also do this on some break before your talk and it's a good idea especially if you have audio or video elements in your presentation.
During the session, you'll give your performance. I expect you'll figure out a good order and flow with the other speakers in your session and it's not too bad if you can build on top of each others' talks.
After the session, we'll take you one whole level up to the QA corner. Instead of doing public QAs, we do it in smaller groups. From this spot, our MC will call the speakers one by one to the interview room where our videographer awaits. The idea is that you can speak five minutes about your topic. We do speaker portraits at the same time. If you want a photoshoot at the tower, we can also arrange that at a good time slot.
Once the break is complete, you are done and can enjoy rest of the conference (assuming you aren't in the last session as then you had time to enjoy before I hope)!

Speakers' dinner#

The speakers' dinner will be held after the workshops on Wednesday and we'll go from the front of the hotel (Scandic Paasi) at 18:00.

If you want to get to the restaurant on your own, please let us know so we don't wait for you. :)

To learn more, please read the attendee guide.