On Sat, 2006-01-28 at 19:12 -1000, Matt Darnell wrote: > I think general conferences are dead. If I subscribed to a couple of > podcasts, I am sure I could hear what the speakers presented, maybe not the > exact same thing, but something similar. Why would anyone want to come to a > convention just to hear someone speak to some prepared slides, or a listen > to remarks that person has already made 10-20 times already?
>From the perspective of podcasts and the recordings I made of some of the conference talks (http://www.tposscon.com/audio.php). You won't generally get a podcast which captures the Q and A session when the end of the main talk has occurred. Normally a conference is not mic'd up to capture audience questions. For the talks at TPOSSCON 2006, the Q and A sessions generally were in excess of 30 minutes after the speaker had ended. I made the decision to remove the Q and A sessions from all but one of the recordings because of: A. The sound levels of questions from the audience were too low and would give a jarring experience for the listener. B. Q and A extended past the 80 minutes recording time on a single Mini Disk and so was truncated anyway. Again, leaving a jarring experience for the listener. C. Hell, if you weren't there to listen to Andre Hill, CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER of Novell, answer questions in depth for over an hour about the direction and strategy of one of the largest global companies supporting Open Source then that's your problem. Or maybe you consider a CTO an "intellectual"? Hope this answers your question. BTW, everyone speaks to prepared slides unless they are a gifted public speaker like Robin Miller who can engage an audience and speak off the cuff for an hour. And yes, who would want to listen to shit someone has already said 10-20 times already? - Julian
