Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)
>"Talks should be either 30 minutes long plus 10 minutes for questions >and answers or 45 minutes long plus 15 minutes for questions and >answers." > >QA been mandatory, is it a problem? I would say very normal and standard procedure. Has been like this in most conferences I have attended. Norbert -- PREINING Norbert http://www.preining.info Accelia Inc. + JAIST + TeX Live + Debian Developer GPG: 0x860CDC13 fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0 ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13
Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)
Hi, I was reading 35c3 CfP [1] and I saw this: "Talks should be either 30 minutes long plus 10 minutes for questions and answers or 45 minutes long plus 15 minutes for questions and answers." QA been mandatory, is it a problem? [1] https://events.ccc.de/2018/09/11/35c3-call-for-participation-and-submission-guidelines/ -- Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls) Curitiba - Brasil Membro da Comunidade Curitiba Livre Site: http://www.phls.com.br GNU/Linux user: 228719 GPG ID: 0443C450 Apoie a campanha pela igualdade de gênero #HeForShe (#ElesPorElas) http://www.heforshe.org/pt
Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)
❦ 12 septembre 2018 13:13 +0100, Ian Jackson : >> I don't suggest to change anything for Debconf, I am just bad at >> conferencing. > > I think you would probably have interesting things to say. I would > like it if you felt able to give a talk, so I am keen that we remove > the barriers that are stopping you. > > Please contribute vigorously to this discussion; or, if you prefer, > email Chris privately (sorry for volunteering you, Chris). The option of not having a Q&A would not help, it would signal your talk is special and you don't care about contributions (I suppose that's why people implementing that in other confs don't make it as an option). The ability to have a system with written questions would definitely solve my issue. -- My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! -- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet" signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)
Vincent Bernat writes ("Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)"):
> I don't speak in front of large audiences because of the Q&A part.
That is a shame. Thank you very much for sharing.
> I don't suggest to change anything for Debconf, I am just bad at
> conferencing.
I think you would probably have interesting things to say. I would
like it if you felt able to give a talk, so I am keen that we remove
the barriers that are stopping you.
Please contribute vigorously to this discussion; or, if you prefer,
email Chris privately (sorry for volunteering you, Chris).
Regards,
Ian.
--
Ian JacksonThese opinions are my own.
If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)
Samuel Thibault writes ("Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)"):
> Matthew Vernon, le sam. 08 sept. 2018 15:41:14 +0100, a ecrit:
> > Moderators happy/able to cut people off who aren't really
> > asking a question seems a better solution than banning all questions.
>
> But the speaker can not be sure that it will happen.
Indeed.
I can definitely see that this is very plausibly a problem (although I
haven't read research or even spoken personally to speakers who are
worried about this).
I am very keen that we should fully support speakers who are not so
sure of themselves. Those people often have the most interesting
things to say and we need to give them the space, encouragement, and
structure things to minimise this kind of worry.
What this certainly means is that we must provide different support
and perhaps a different approach for different speakers in different
contexts.
I don't know how best to ask the question of a speaker, what kind of
support they need, but certainly the conference management system is
an opportunity to do that. Also we could publicly state, in our CFP
for example, what our plans will be - so that people can be confident
that they will be welcomed and supported.
Ian.
--
Ian JacksonThese opinions are my own.
If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)
Chris Lamb writes ("Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)"):
> I noticed yesterday [0] that the PyCascades conference [1] explicitly
> does not permit any questions and answers after a presentation.
This is interesting.
As an audience member I have sometimes found myself intensely
irritated when (it seems to me that) a questioner is wasting
everyone's time with some incomprehensible polemic, or whatever.
Often when this happens I feel the speaker does not shut them down
quickly enough. I think the speaker is perhaps not always sure enough
of their ground to do so.
I think this could be addressed by having a moderator who was prepared
to make a value judgement about the question, and who had a low
threshold for intervening.
In general I often find that stronger moderation (of audience
participation in talks and panels, and of airtime in BOFs) is a good
thing.
However, I would be very sad to see questions banned entirely.
Some of my best experiences at DC18 were related to questions. Talks
with small audiences or in small rooms often turn in a kind of BOF
session which can be both very useful, and very affirming for
everyone.
And speaking entirely personally: When giving a talk, especially about
new software or anything complicated, i find it can be very helpful to
be interrupted if I have skipped over something. I'm aware of the
questioner self-selection problem. I don't feel unsure, so I don't
need help from a moderator in managing the questions I might get :-).
Overall, perhaps we could ensure that we have a moderators available,
certainly for the larger rooms, and also whenever the speaker requests
it.
The moderator could have a quick chat with the speaker about how much
support they want, whether the speaker wants to take questions during
the talk, at the end, or not at all, etc. Ideally moderators would
have been exposed to some kind of training or at least briefing.
The "go up to the stage afterwards" format for questions is a good one
too, though. Certainly it should be offered to speakers, and
sometimes even recommended. Speakers should certainly not feel that
they are expected to take questions in the standard "talk to the whole
room" format, if they feel intimidated by that idea.
I think, the bigger the room, the more appropriate it is to use the
"chat up at the stage" format.
Another possibility would be for the moderator to use the per-room irc
channel to collect people who want to ask questions. That is, people
would state their question in irc, and the moderator would tell, again
in irc, who the next person is to ask a question. So the moderator
could choose the best questions.
Ian.
Re: The Guardian about Debian
Peter van Summeren writes ("The Guardian about Debian"):
> I read today in the Guardian
> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2018/aug/16/
> i-want-to-boycott-us-pc-hardware-software-services#img-1
>
> "While GNU/Linux is mostly American, at least the kernel was started by Linus
> Torvalds in Finland, though he moved to the US decades ago and is now a US
> citizen. Happily, there are some non-American Linux distributions such as
> Canonical s Ubuntu. Canonical was founded and bankrolled by a South African,
> Mark Shuttleworth, and is based in London. However, Ubuntu is based on Debian
> Linux, which is American."
What a pile of tosh.
Ian.
