Presenting

So you'd like to present Nix or NixOS to a group or organization?

Great, we have put together this page to help you get started!

We considered putting together a canned presentation, and maybe we still will but we think it's more compelling when an individual presents a message that they really own. Ideally, users will see your presentation and leave feeling excited to try NixOS.

Purpose

Begin by considering the purpose of your presentation:

• Make it personal to you
• Why do you want to give this presentation?
• Why is giving the presentation important?

Compelling components

Think about how you want to communicate the value or benefits of Nix:

• Telling a story
• Use the following needs-to-features framework:

1. Situation that leads to a problem
2. Implications of that problem, pain points
3. How does Nix or NixOS take care of that problem

• Live demos are exciting and compelling, but also risky, so be sure to practice and have contingency plans!

Bonus idea: fold these ideas together into a single cohesive whole.

What to focus on

When brainstorming your presentation, consider the following questions:

• What's important about Nix to you?
• What makes you excited about Nix?
• What do you usually show others when showing them Nix?
• When you're showing Nix to others, what gets them excited?
• What do they most like about Nix?

Answers to these questions could include:

• Reproducible Builds
• Managing Dependency Relationships
• Fearlessly making changes
• Constant time rollbacks
• Configuring from a single canonical location
• Being part of something big, early
• Building skills in Nix
• Learning basic semantics of system management on an as-needed basis

Live demos

The best live demos will be the unique ones you come up with yourself, but to get you started, we have a basic set of examples:

• Vignettes in the Examples on nixos.org.