[advocacy-discuss] shorter is better

[Jim Grisanzio]

hey ... I was at a Web 2. 0 event last night: 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/tags/tokyo2point0

Nothing new there. I go to a lot of events in Tokyo.

But I wanted to share an interesting experience. The organizers tried 
something new last nite. Instead of doing two long presentations, with a 
break for food/drink, they did five or six short ones on top of two jet 
fast lightening talks. Gigantic difference.

There were about 100 people there (which is about normal for this event 
each month) and the energy was palpable. The presenters, because they 
/absolutely had/ to be brief, were noticeably animated (rushing, 
basically), and that led to a great deal of humor (something totally 
absent from most standard 50 minute talks with 10 mins of questions). 
Also, interesting was that the number of side discussions generated from 
each talk was substantial. In other words, I noticed a lot of people 
just crowding around laptops in a corner working on stuff with the 
speaker who just finished his/her talk. And this was not distracting, 
too, since the vast majority of people were glued to the main speaker. 
Then after the last talk, people just hung around for another hour or so 
talking and such -- lots of social conversations but just as many 
discussions about business and technology. And many languages, too.

Things I like about this event:

    * Multi lingual and multi cultural.
          o Extreme diversity is encouraged.
    * Multiple talks with a clear bias for short talks
          o Fast, highly informative, designed to grab attention for
            follow up discussions.
    * Low lighting, music, food/drink (it's a bar, basically).
          o Hard to take pics in the dark but better for trashing formality.
    * No Corporate Sponsor Signs
          o Make no mistake, companies /are/ there but they don't bang
            you over the head with their "we sponsored this for you" crap.
    * Give-a-ways
          o They somehow seem silly in this environment.
    * Don't line up the chairs neatly in a row (and have different types
      of chairs, too).
          o You want people walking around, sitting, standing, etc.
    * All translations are summaries at the end, /not/ live and direct.
          o Increases speed and flow of communication. Direct is not
            necessary in most instances.
    * Three screens set low to the ground.
          o Lets speakers directly interact with the slides/demos
            projected on the wall.
    * Good sound.
          o This has never been a problem for these guys. Why is it for
            others?
    * No stage.
          o Not having room for a stage is good. Keep speakers on same
            level.
    * Audience is very close to speakers.
          o Same as point above.
    * Lots of opportunities to go off in the corner and talk/hack.
          o This is encouraged, respected, and very effective.
    * Interesting content
          o Of course.
    * Totally informal.
          o Live Twitter, IrC, video ...

And as a result? Participation is high. Seems like a great model, eh? :) 
Anyway, just some ideas to kick around if you are doing events ...

Jim

-- 
http://twitter.com/jimgris


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