[FOSS4G-Oceania] [OSGeo Oceania] FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2019 - programme outline

Sun Apr 28 20:41:55 PDT 2019

Personally, I find shorter talks are better. Yes, speakers complain – that is, because it is actually an art to make good short talks ( and I am no good at them either).
But some of the best talks in the conference were actually quite short. Who wants to know more, can grab the speaker, shout them a coffee, and keep on until the wee hours.
If we do not have enough speakers, or find gaps, we can always extend. But maybe let’s plan for these shorter slots, as Adam suggests.

Martin

From: FOSS4G-Oceania <foss4g-oceania-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of adam steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com>
Date: Monday, 29 April 2019 at 1:35 pm
To: Daniel Silk <dwsilk at gmail.com>
Cc: foss4g-oceania <foss4g-oceania at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [FOSS4G-Oceania] [OSGeo Oceania] FOSS4G SotM Oceania 2019 - programme outline

Hi Daniel

Those feedback numbers represent 4% / 12% of the whole audience (n=250); and 9.6 / 28 % of feedback providers respectively (n=104)

For context, a number of the complaints about sessions getting out of sync relate to one specific session which had the mother of all tech failures at the start, and the chair (me) decided that letting everyone speak was more important than syncing sessions and dropping a speaker.

It may have been a bad decision but hey. We’re human (alternately, I screwed up on behalf of everyone).

From my PoV shorter talks means we can get more people on stage, and to me that’s a goal worth chasing. Recall also there was also positive feedback about the short talk time; and one of our stated missions is inclusion - which can be expressed by giving more people space to speak.

With 90min sessions a way of fitting 4 x 15+5 min could be:

- 5min (11:00 - 11:05) housekeeping / speaker intros (everyone at every session will get the ‘be nice’ speil, we might get sick of it but hey.)
- 20min x 4 (11:05, 11:25, 11:45, 12:05)
- 5min early finish or extra Q’s / speaker meet n greet / discussion

(or 2min intro / longer final chitchat)

Another idea might be to keep session rooms available for extended show and tells in breaks. I’m sure they were last year but we can make a point of it.

This trades a small number of complaints (which may also be addressable by having back entrances in rooms) against having a few more talks. I’m very clearly in favour of the latter.

We need to have some ideas before a CfP, but we can also say ‘if there are only N proposals, we run X slots, if there are n^2 proposals, we try to fit as many as possible, we’ll let you know!’ (maybe we have two days of lightning talks :D )

Is there a specific reason to close at 5? I think we could push till 5:30 if we wanted to, it’s only two days we need to stay switched on for...

Cheers

Adam

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 at 09:00, Daniel Silk <dwsilk at gmail.com<mailto:dwsilk at gmail.com>> wrote:
Looking at the feedback we received, there were around 10 responses that mention the talk length being too short.
Around 20 responses that mention difficulty moving between sessions (not enough time allocated or sessions not staying in sync).

If we stick with 15+5 then we aren't really doing anything to address these responses (aside from asking session chairs not to allow talks to start early).

The program overview<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17KvFcVn226ay0clCZsBTL0jpbX-4ZMt6nyBfLcF94mE/edit#gid=0> currently allocates 90mins to stream sessions for 4 talks. This is 22.5mins per talk. We need clearly defined start times for the four talks, so starting at 11:00 / 11:22.5 / 11:45 / 12:07.5 seems cumbersome.

If we push out to 100min we would have 25mins per talk, split into 18mins for the talk itself + 5mins questions + 2mins room change.
18mins seems a little arbitrary but "the 18 minute rule" defines the maximum length of a TED talk.

Last year we squeezed 5 talks into a 100min slot. If we have 4 talks in a 100min slot, I think we'll address that feedback.
We can stick within the 9-5 by reducing the keynote sessions by 10min and making the last session on day 1 3 talks instead of 4. Keynotes can still be 25min + 5min. This still gives 45 presentation slots (same as last year). Program with these edits is here<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17KvFcVn226ay0clCZsBTL0jpbX-4ZMt6nyBfLcF94mE/edit#gid=1250988911>.

Cheers
Daniel

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 9:44 AM adam steer <adam.d.steer at gmail.com<mailto:adam.d.steer at gmail.com>> wrote:
hey John, all

We need to bear in mind we have only 48 talk slots right now; and one of our goals is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to talk (inclusivity). In the event we get less than 48 submissions we could reach out to speakers for some extended talks.

Right now I’d prefer to not advertise it as an option.

Cheers

Adam

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 at 06:09, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com<mailto:johnwbryant at gmail.com>> wrote:
As Edoardo mentioned in a side thread to this discussion, SotM is running a process that allows for the possibility of extending some talks [1]<https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2019-March/038287.html>.

From their CFP:

* The “Extended talk” submission type: Big ideas need time to grow. For

talks in this category we will allow double the time (40 min) compared

to the usual talks. Make sure to mention why your talk needs this

extended space.
In their case, it's a matter of giving a talk 2 slots rather than 1, but perhaps we could consider something like having some slots that are a *bit* longer, eg 25+5 instead of 15+5. We could ask people to indicate when they submit whether they would like a longer slot if it were available, block out certain slots for the longer talks, and then schedule accordingly. It makes for a bit more of a logistical puzzle to put together, but might mitigate the feedback from many that talks were too short.

Possible?

[1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2019-March/038287.html<https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2019-March/038287.html>

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