[Foss4g2009] Draft of Call for Abstracts

[Mark Leslie]

mapbutcher wrote:
> +1 on Harley's comments  - he is representative of a user base, which 
> (IMO) we're trying to represent in our theme 'user driven'.

Can anyone take a shot at drafting a couple bullet points for the call? 
  With so much support behind it, this should be more prominent than it 
is, but my literary skillz seem to be overtaxed at the moment.

> re: presentation timeslots. I guess we have to publicise a time slot and 
> i think this should be 25mins - I'm not sure that dictating 5mins here, 
> 5 mins there, will actually enforce what in reality will be a 30min time 
> slot i.e you have 30 mins to get in do your stuff, and get out before 
> the next person arrives for their 30mins. Every conference I have been 
> to struggles on this point and it eventually boils down to disciplining 
> the overall presentation segments i.e. 30mins - if we don't break that 
> rule we'll be good :)

We could keep it simple and say "presentations are 30 minutes including 
time for question and answer sessions."  Let people organise their 30 as 
they see fit.

> ...and that brings us round to Marks point about presentation management 
> - I'd prefer us to have a rota established ahead of time with OC members 
> and other volunteers drafted to manage a set of 2/3 presentations. Given 
> the current program this would require:
> 
> 13 session segments on day 1
> 9 sessions segments on day 2
> 11 session segments on day 3

This sounds like a good plan.  Hopefully we'll have enough volunteers 
that we'll have some time to /just attend/ some presentations, but if 
not we can at least rotate around enough to stay interested.  Do we know 
how many people have offered to do this kind of thing in previous years?

> re: submitting presentations before hand - from my experience I spend 
> the night before a presentation changing it (...writing it, Baden Powell 
> was not always true when he said 'be prepared'), then the minutes before 
> I change it again (because I've just sat through my presentation given 
> by someone else) therefore I'm not a big fan of slide submissions ahead 
> of the presentation - is it that difficult to walk up with a machine and 
> swap the video? If of course the presenter is not using their own 
> machine then yes i think its reasonable to ask for slides to be 
> submitted in advance. If this is the case I think the allocated 
> presentation facilitator should have a machine with the slide sets on 
> and this should be the default back up.

Hmm...  I'm of the other breed.  I need things locked down so I can stop 
worrying about them.  But you offer a nice middle ground.  Have some 
slides submitted before hand and ready in case things go tits-up, but 
allow presenters to plug their gear in if they so choose.  Really, if we 
stick to the 'it's your 30 minutes, do with it as you will' approach, 
any technical problems they experience will be on their own time.

I would also prefer to get some slides for the website before the 
presentations, just because I've noticed most people are much slower to 
respond afterwards.  More of a pet peeve than a legitimate issue though.