Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (292 mails)

[Jos Poortvliet <jos@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2011-04-29 Robert wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > Let's see what we can do for this conference with the following
> > _assumptions_:
> > *1 big room for talks and 4 smaller rooms
> > *read-only talks only in the big room
>
> Why? A read-only talk to a smaller audience in a smaller room is a
> very different experience for everyone than a read-only talk in a
> big room. Further, in a smaller room, read-only talks tend to be
> less read-only in smaller rooms as people feel more comfortable
> asking questions.

If it is meant to be interactive it should be interactive. Last year, it 
got confusing - several bofs turned out to be non-interactive and some 
talks were more like BOF's. This year we want to bring some clarity. 
Having a separate room & clear naming would be helpful.

> > *discussions in 2 rooms
>
> I like discussions, but reserving 2 rooms for 4 days to discuss stuff
> appears a bit excessive to me. I don't think we want a "lets just
> hang out" conference.

Discussions is the word I picked for BOF-style sessions. Interestingly 
enough some ppl know the term BOF, others know other terms - is there 
something that works for everyone? :D

With the explanation of Discussion = BOF, not completely unstructured or 
hanging out-style (see the wiki pages I wrote, pls, feedback very 
welcome) you think it's OK to have a majority of those discussions?

About the keynotes, yeah. With Klaas' suggestion to go for 40min +5, 
we'd get:


_assumptions_:
*1 big room for talks and 4 smaller rooms
*read-only talks only in the big room
*discussions/BOFs in 2 rooms
*workshops in 1 room
*1 suselabs room
*We have 4 days
*Starting at 9:30 with a 1 hour keynote followed by a 30 min break
*keeping things up until 16:15 (as we have cool ideas for things after  
that time)
*Sessions are 40 min + 5 min to go to the next one. That is about 30 min 
talking!
*a 1 hour lunch break and 2 30 min coffee breaks (10:30-11, 1230-1330 
and 15:00-15:30)

We can have 5 slots per day per room. That means up to:
1 keynote per day, 4 total
5 talks/day, 20 total
5 workshops/day, 20 total (but several will last 2-4 hours so count on 
more like 10 workshops in total
10 Discussions/day, 40 total
5 SUSE Labs sessions/day, 20 total.

Yep, counted very well, 84 total slots, probably like 75 sessions to be 
scheduled in total.

Interestingly enough, a longer keynote & shorter sessions means we end 
15 min earlier (16:15) and still have 5 sessions/day or keep going until 
17:00 and have room for 6 sessions... :D

> > *workshops in 1 room
> > *1 suselabs room
> > *We have 4 days
> > *Starting at 9 with a 30 min keynote
>
> I think keynotes should be longer, 45 minutes to an hour.
>
> > *keeping things up until 16:30 (as we have cool ideas for things
> > after *that time)
> > *a 1 hour lunch break and 2 30 min coffee breaks (10:30-11, 12-13
> > and 15:00-15:30)
>
> I think a break right after the keynote works well as people always
> have something to talk about after the keynote. Counting in longer
> keynotes the first break could be 10:00 - 10:30 which would leave
> room for two 40 min talks/discussions... before lunch.
>
> > We can have 5 slots per day per room. That means up to:
> > 1 keynote per day, 4 total
> > 5 talks/day, 20 total
> > 5 workshops/day, 20 total (but several will last 2-4 hours so count
> > on more like 10 workshops in total
> > 10 Discussions/day, 40 total
> > 5 SUSE Labs sessions/day, 20 total.
> >
> > Yep, counted very well, 84 total slots, probably like 75 sessions
> > to be scheduled in total.
>
> Robert