[advocacy-discuss] Tech Days Tour 2007-2008

[Jim Grisanzio]

max at bruningsystems.com wrote:


> Hi Jim,
> 5 minute talks!  


Yep. Huge value. And great fun, too! And what better way to encourage 
new people to get involved in presenting? Why do all the presos have to 
be an hour with dozens of slides? That's far too long for the vast 
majority of people -- especially people who are new to the community. 
How about a 5 min or 10 min talk on a UG status update? How about a 10 
minute talk on an install experience? Or a build experience? Or whatever.


> Is this because so many people wanted to talk, or 
> because nobody had anything worth saying that lasted longer
> than 5 minutes?  


Judging from the massive interaction with the audience and all the 
applause and laughter and shouting and everyone standing up, I'd say 
these 5-minute gigs were pretty valuable to these guys. Keep in mind 
that these were Lightning talks, so they were designed to be short. Some 
used slides, some didn't. There may have been 10 minute talks and 5 
minute talks. I lost track. It was pretty wild, actually. It was 
rapid-fire delivery, no question. Some of them were user experiences, 
some technical, some organizational, etc. They were mostly in Japanese, 
too, so I didn't catch most of it, but I got the gist of what was going on.

Also, the Ruby community is very active and very big in Japan (it 
started here). I think it was a case of a genuine community putting on a 
conference where active participation was extremely high. You don't see 
that level of activity at the Tech Days events because the Tech Days 
venue is closer to a traditional conference. But for OpenSolaris Day, 
however, there's nothing stopping us from experimenting with one of the 
sessions. So, perhaps we use one 50 minute slot -- maybe the community 
section -- for some Lightning talks or a few shorter sessions. Just an 
idea. Just to break it up and experiment. For the first time, I bet this 
is extremely challenging, though. We have to build in /community/ to the 
  venue and that takes time.

Or perhaps we have some micro-talks at a reception during the evening 
when people are eating and drinking. That's what we do here at Sun in 
Japan. We hold a "Developers' Lounge" every few months at a little club 
in Tokyo. About 40 people from a dozen or so communities around town. 
Agenda is made up on the spot on a white board. No corporate signs. No 
stage. No canned music. Lost of food and drink and rapid fire presos. 
Lots of interaction. Very cool. http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/tags/lounge


> I guess if the talks are not technical, this is a way 
> to go.  As for a 5 minute technical talk, it would be better to just
> throw up a slide with a list of references and take questions...  Even 
> 20 minutes sounds way too short to get into any technical
> depth.  

Sure, you can't drill down in 5 mins. That's just the point, though. You 
don't go into depth by design. The mistake we make with a lot of our 
conferences is we think every talk needs to be in depth. They don't. So, 
people sit through a series of 5 or 6 hour long talks and then we 
complain that participation is low (in terms of questions, etc). That's 
way too much depth and doesn't promote interaction.


> I'm curious, were the attendees at the Ruby conference 
> developers or managers or marketing people?


Developers. Vast majority. Corporate involvement was pretty much 
invisible to me and I didn't' see any suits. Also, I'd say that the 
majority of the talks were 30 mins. The whole schedule seemed to be 
split into sections and everything happened in one room with about 300 
or so people. So, section X had three 30 minute talks. Section Y had 
three 30 minute talks. Etc. Questions were usually taken at the end of 
each section, not at the end of each talk. And there were breaks between 
sections. There was also opening and closing keynotes for 60 mins and a 
bunch of lightning talks. And the whole event had a moderator or master 
of ceremonies or whatever the term is. Someone who managed everything 
from the stage. The entire two-day event distinctly lacked formality and 
had more participation than any tech conf I've ever seen. Oh, and the 
closing keynote had pretty much zero technical content. It was about 
"community" and "values" and it got a several /minute/ standing ovation.

http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/entry/ruby_kaigi_2007


> In a 50 minute talk, the speaker should be able to hold the attention 
> span the entire time (assuming the topic is of interest to the audience).


Sure. I agree. But I'd argue that that's extremely rare. Far too many 
speakers are talking to themselves up there and don't even realize it. I 
find that the real information delivered at conferences happens in the 
hallways crunched over laptops and at night socially.


> Then again, typically at the beginning of a talk, you probably get ~80% 
> of people's attention.  After a short time, say 1-2 minutes,
> this drops off to ~10%.  Then, in the last minute or so, people realize 
> you are about to finish so the attention span goes back up to
> something like 75%.  So, in a 1 hour talk, you only really need about 5 
> minutes of actual information, and the rest of the time
> you can say just about anything, because no one is paying attention 
> anyway.  A little bit like this email, I suspect...
> 
> Wait, I have an idea!  I am willing to do 10 5-minute talks one after 
> another...
> 
> My impression is that some people are much more interested in the topic 
> being presented than can be covered in a 50 minute
> talk.  Of course, other people have no interest whatsoever, and should 
> probably take a walk or something until there is a talk they think
> will hold their attention.  It might be nice to somehow come up with a 
> way where people who are more interested can talk 1 on 1 with the 
> presenters after the talks are finished.

I agree. To increase participation we may want to consider more 
non-formal activity. So, fewer hour-long talks, more shorter talks, add 
some lightning talks to increase the number of people who can 
participate, add breaks where questions can be addressed with speakers, 
maybe have some panel sessions, maybe some hacking sessions, have an IRC 
channel running throughout, and more social activity. But the social 
activity needs to be seen as just as valuable as the formal talks. 
Sometimes we think the formal hour-long talks are the only thing of 
value. I'd argue against this.

We also need to be aware that different cultures react differently in 
different situations. Here in East Asia, you show up with a formal 
conference, the audience reaction will tend be formal. Breaking the 
formality is one way to help increase participation here. Now, in other 
areas, such as the US, an hour long talk may be fine.

These are just some suggestions ... don't have to do any of 'em.

Jim
-- 
Jim Grisanzio http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris