---

name: add-speaker description: Use when a devopsdays event has confirmed a speaker and their talk, workshop, ignite, or keynote needs to appear on the event site - covers the speaker bio page, the talk page, the headshot, and multi-speaker talks.

Add a speaker and their talk

Every speaker needs two files that share one slug, plus usually a headshot:

| File | Purpose | |---|---| | content/events/<YYYY>-<city>/speakers/<slug>.md | The bio page | | content/events/<YYYY>-<city>/program/<slug>.md | The talk page: title and abstract | | assets/events/<YYYY>-<city>/speakers/<slug>.<ext> | The headshot |

Adding a speaker does not put them on the schedule. That is .claude/skills/build-program/SKILL.md.

The slug

Lowercase, ASCII, hyphen-separated: jane-doe, maria-lopez. Fold accents (Ramírez → ramirez), drop apostrophes and periods (O'Brien → obrien, J.R. Smith → jr-smith).

The Lint Filenames CI job hard-fails on any mixed-case filename, so this is not cosmetic.

1. Speaker page

content/events/<YYYY>-<city>/speakers/<slug>.md. TOML frontmatter, +++ delimiters:

+++
Title = "Jane Doe"
Twitter = ""
linkedin = ""
image = ""
type = "speaker"
linktitle = "jane-doe"

+++

Jane's bio goes here. Markdown works.

The mixed key casing is what the generator produces and what every existing file uses. Hugo is case-insensitive about frontmatter keys, so match the template rather than tidying it.

Optional fields the theme renders: Website, Facebook, Github, Pronouns, twitch, mastodon, bluesky. Give mastodon and bluesky full profile URLs; Twitter and Github take bare usernames without the @.

image is a bare filename, not a path — it resolves against assets/events/<YYYY>-<city>/speakers/. Leave it "" if there is no photo; the theme falls back to a default avatar.

Watch the first line. If the +++ has a trailing space — which happens with CRLF line endings on Windows — the site will not build. Use LF.

2. Talk page

content/events/<YYYY>-<city>/program/<slug>.md:

+++
Talk_date = ""
Talk_start_time = ""
Talk_end_time = ""
Title = "The Real Title Of The Talk"
Type = "talk"
Speakers = ["jane-doe"]
+++

The abstract goes here. Markdown works.

• Title here is the display title of the talk, unlike the program YAML where title is a slug. Do not confuse the two.
• Speakers is always an array, even for one speaker, and holds speaker slugs, not names.
• The Talk_* fields are vestigial — the schedule comes from the program data. Leave them empty.
• Keep Type = "talk" even for a keynote, workshop, or ignite. Those values have no layout and fall through to a blank template. The program entry is where you mark it as an ignite or workshop.

3. Headshot

Copy into assets/events/<YYYY>-<city>/speakers/<slug>.<ext>, creating the directory if needed:

mkdir -p assets/events/2026-boston/speakers
cp ~/Downloads/jane.jpg assets/events/2026-boston/speakers/jane-doe.jpg

• .jpg, .png and .webp all work — the extension must match the actual format
• Square, ideally 600×600. Non-square images get cropped on the speakers index but not on the individual pages
• Lowercase filename and lowercase extension
• Then set it in the speaker file: image = "jane-doe.jpg"

Note utilities/add_speakers.sh hardcodes .png for both the check and the destination, so it will happily save a JPEG under a .png name. Writing the files directly avoids that.

4. Two or more speakers on one talk

Create a speaker page for each. Create one talk page listing all of them:

Speakers = ["jane-doe", "sam-patel"]

You can name that talk file after either speaker, or rename it to something combined (doe-patel.md) — as long as the program entry's title matches the filename.

5. Show the speakers page in the nav

The first time an event adds speakers, uncomment the entry in data/events/<YYYY>/<city>/main.yml:

nav_elements:
  - name: speakers

Do this by hand. The sed in utilities/add_speakers.sh that is supposed to do it no longer matches the template and silently does nothing.

You also need content/events/<YYYY>-<city>/speakers.md to exist:

+++
Title = "Speakers"
Type = "speakers"
Description = "Speakers for devopsdays <City> <YYYY>"
+++

6. Verify

• Both files use the same slug
• Speakers = [...] holds slugs that match real files in speakers/
• image matches a file that is actually on disk, with the right extension
• Preview /events/<YYYY>-<city>/speakers/ and the individual talk page

7. Submit

Follow .claude/skills/submit-changes/SKILL.md.

PR title: [BOS-2026] Add Jane Doe and her talk.