On 2011-04-12 16:17:18 (-0600), Alan Clark <aclark@novell.com> wrote:
On 4/8/2011 at 03:54 PM, in message <20110408215402.GF10983@hera>, Pascal Bleser <pascal.bleser@opensuse.org> wrote: [...] There are always several objectives, and we all have our opinion and wishes on what we'd like to see happening at the conference. [...]
- attract new contributors (what you're referring to as "newcomers")
- share expertise and knowledge, make workshops, brainstorm, which is more of an "inwards" perspective on us, what we do, and what we want to do (which includes what we suck at, what's badly missing, cool new ideas, and gather expertise from the very knowledgeable people in the project) [...]
- trigger collaboration with other projects and distributions [...]
- get to know each other, "physically", also known as "around a couple of beers" :) [...] Going from there, let's try to think of
- how to market/advertise/broadcast the event (1)
- what "sort" of contributors we would like to attract (1) (and, hence, what topics/workshops to present)
- hot topics (2)
- future topics (2)
- projects we want to collaborate with (3)
- social events (4) [...] Pascal, I attempted to capture your ideas onto the current wiki page: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Conference_Planning_2011#Conference_Objectiv...
Oh great, thanks! [...]
Yes and no. There were some, of course, but almost all of them were "read-only": someone presents something, then there are a few minutes for Q&A and then it's done. While it's certainly interesting, we should have most of those as more workshop-alike sessions, with an introductory presentation and then have enough time (or another session later) to share ideas, experience, etc...
Doing this can create a very productive session. I've seen this implemented in several different ways, the most successful method requires the presenter to do as much or more preparation than a "read only" presentation. When it works well the presenter and audience walk away much more satisfied, when it doesn't work well it can be a total disaster.
Sure, although I don't think it requires that much more preparation. Many of us have experience, ideas, and our respective backgrounds and knowledge to bring to the table. I don't doubt that we'll get productive discussions going in most of those sessions. Presenters just need to make sure that they make 2 or 3 slides with bullet points (not more than 4 per slide! ;)) about future directions and tasks, and how people can help. And also be prepared to put a few things up for discussion. There can't be collaboration if you're not ready to share your "baby." I'd rather believe that the speaker also needs to be a bit prepared to do some moderation, if there are too many talks and ideas going on at the same time :D (Well, anyone else in the room can take the moderation role.) But the risk of ending in a total disaster isn't higher than with a "read-only" session, where the risk is at least equally high that people are frustrated because they had something to contribute or wanted more in-depth insight but couldn't, because there were just 5 minutes of Q&A in a large room :\ cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green __v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf