Scheduling for Ruby Manor - no question time?

[Murray Steele]

Stealing from the shoulders of giants:
http://blog.obiefernandez.com/content/2008/09/voices-that-matter-professional-ruby-conference.html

I'm interested particularly in the part where Obie says: "questions
should be discouraged"

What do people think of that idea for Ruby Manor? Questions can be
done face-to-face in the hall-way, at the back of the room, in the
bar, over lunch, as you stand next to each other in the bathroom
pee-ing, basically anywhere but right at the end of the talk in front
of everyone else so you can show off how awesome you are for
nitpicking about a typo in a slide with some code on it. Snarkiness
about one question I heard once at some conference ages ago aside, I
think this might be an idea worth discussing properly.

I can think of 2 clear advantages based on James and I's rough
schedule of 30min+8min talks:

1. we'd have more time between talks for doing the laptop-cable-swap-waltz,
2. we might have enough time for another talk or two

Muz

[David Salgado]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea of discouraging questions. I think
a sensible question, intelligently discussed, can add a lot of benefit
to a talk.

The trouble is, as you say, people asking questions as some kind of
dicksize comparison substitute. Not sure how to separate the wheat
from the chaff though. Maybe some way that all questions are
submitted, but only the interesting ones (as judged by the
speaker/moderator) are picked up - perhaps using IRC or twitter?

D

2008/9/18 Murray Steele <murray...@gmail.com>:

[Jason Cale]

I think the idea of the speaker / moderator choosing relevant
questions is a good one .. kinda like what they do at the Apollo for
comedy gigs..

Its a good point, as I've been to plenty of conferences when you
either have some snivelling tit for tat questions, or dead air ..

IRC / Twitter point seems like a reasonable suggestion, I know I've
been in the position where I have wanted to ask a question, but don't
really want to stand up infront of demon eyes and ask it ..

Jase.

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[Murray Steele]

2008/9/18 David Salgado <da...@digitalronin.com>:

>
> I think
> a sensible question, intelligently discussed, can add a lot of benefit
> to a talk.

I agree. Questions like "did you think about doing X", or "have you
considered using Y in combination?" can really add something to a
talk. However, with this up front discussion of the talks, hopefully
we'll get a lot of these kind of questions asked before the talk is
given, and then there'll be no need to ask them as they'll be covered
in the talks already!

Ok, that's the utopian dream, but maybe it would work?

Muz

ps. I know these are only one, very narrow, example of good questions
and even these can backfire if the question is bat-shit insane.

[James Cox]

i was going to add- 

i think it's important to have interaction during talks, so any avoidance of this is painful. i think obie's point is to somehow emphasise the importance of the speaker. I would rather have people heckling me to better improve and inform what i'm talking about -- and by extension the audience. having an MC would be nice, between muz and james i think that's well covered :)

-j

--

James Cox, 
Internet Consultant
t: 07968 349990  e: ja...@imaj.es w: http://imaj.es/ 

[James Adam]

I've been in sessions at other conferences where one dominant personality from the audience has stomped all over a speaker like this, and it really sucks, but I'm not sure about a militant "no questions" stance.

I'm happy to leave this up to the individual speaker. I don't mind if someone says "Look, I've got a lot to cover, so if you have questions catch me afterwards", and I'd want each speaker to feel comfortable saying that. 

Equally, if they say "ask questions whenever you like", that's probably fine too, although in that case the speaker should be prepared to put the question to one side if it's going to interrupt or de-rail the rest of their presentation.

Essentially, let the speaker decide.

I'm also happy to have moderators who help keep the session from descending into chaos, as long as they're volunteers and everyone understands that if their question gets put aside, it's nothing personal.

Like Murray said, one of the positive side effects of working through the proposal discussions in public before the day is hopefully we can avoid any of the less useful lines of questioning by giving people a clear idea of what the talk is going to cover beforehand.

James

[Roland Swingler]

I think this should be very much up to the speaker. A couple of
presentations I have been to have encouraged questions throughout, and
been all the better for it.

What may be a good idea is making it explicit that speakers aren't
*expected* to leave 5 mins for questions, just because its the norm
for talks. I.e. if you're giving a controversial talk and think
questions/discussion would add to that then great - factor it in; if
you're presenting a library / framework etc. then followup may be best
suited to the bar.

R

> >>> 2008/9/18 Murray Steele <murray.ste...@gmail.com>:

>
> >>>> Stealing from the shoulders of giants:

> >>>>http://blog.obiefernandez.com/content/2008/09/voices-that-matter-prof...

[Chris O'Sullivan]

The more I think about this the more I start to like the whole 'no questions' idea.  I agree that having a question time 'can' generate some interesting conversation, but in my experience this is rarely the case.

Questions are typically boring - boring - boring!

The show off:
"Have you tried this obscure piece of technology that I'm going to rant on for the next 5 minutes?"

The pedant:
"Actually the flux capacitor needs to run at 88.8 miles an hour not 88 miles an hour like you said in your talk because of the relationship between the speed of light and quantum physics.."

The newb:
"So, what's this Ruby thing I keep hearing about?"

The edge case implementor:
"I'm having a problem doing this at work because of several reasons I'm going to list out here, how can I do this?"

So get rid of questions I say!  Throw them out the window!  Instead, offer a special gap between sessions so that people can ask their questions can ask them in privacy and not take up everyone else's time.

2008/9/18 Roland Swingler <roland....@gmail.com>

[James Adam]

There are occasions where a question or remark *can* help everyone - if the presenter skipped a step they thought was obvious, for example, or gets confused themselves (I've certainly gotten lost in my own presentation more than once).

The open way we're discussion the proposals should, hopefully, help weed out the 'newb' questions, since everyone will have ample opportunity to do some research beforehand.

Is there any way to socially engineer the presentation format to encourage good questions, or discourage 'show offs', 'pedants' and 'edge casers'? If not, then you're probably right, but it'd be great to avoid strict rules where good behaviour can be encouraged instead.

[Anthony Green]

> On 18 Sep, 16:10, James Adam <ja...@lazyatom.com> wrote:
>> I've been in sessions at other conferences where one dominant
>> personality from the audience has stomped all over a speaker like
>> this, and it really sucks,

Was anyone else at the MagLev BoF in Berlin ?
I though the Romper Stomper on that occasion did a good job of exposing the
prepared talk as a waste of time. Fortunately for Ruby Manor we have a
forum.

[James Adam]

The occasion I have in mind, the offending person interrupted the
speaker very rudely, saying "I'm not interested in that, explain that
other part to me again? ... <some explanation and an attempt to move
on> ... I might not be interested later ... <more explanation> ... OK,
now I'm interested again."

It was arrogant, selfish and less than constructive, and my heart went
out to the speaker.

I think audience interaction can be a great thing, as long as it's
undertaken with respect, both for the speaker and the other people in
the room :)

[David A. Black]

Hi --

On Sep 18, 7:46 am, "Murray Steele" <murray.ste...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Stealing from the shoulders of giants:http://blog.obiefernandez.com/content/2008/09/voices-that-matter-prof...

>
> I'm interested particularly in the part where Obie says: "questions
> should be discouraged"

Obie's post, and the post by Pete Forde that he quotes, both make me
uneasy because they're very prescriptive; they've contain a lot of
advice about what *every* event that wants to be successful should do.
It's always interesting to me to see what other event organizers have
done, but I'm a bit allergic to the absolutes ("You don't need
sponsors", "Questions should be discouraged", precise numerical
formulas for event size, etc.). Pete's checklist looks very thorough
for an event with the profile of RubyFringe, but not all events have,
nor can they or should they have, the same profile.

So I'll make an effort not to just say "Of course there should be
questions if the speaker wants to make time for them!" in an absolute
manner :-)

> What do people think of that idea for Ruby Manor?  Questions can be
> done face-to-face in the hall-way, at the back of the room, in the
> bar, over lunch, as you stand next to each other in the bathroom
> pee-ing, basically anywhere but right at the end of the talk in front
> of everyone else so you can show off how awesome you are for
> nitpicking about a typo in a slide with some code on it.  Snarkiness
> about one question I heard once at some conference ages ago aside, I
> think this might be an idea worth discussing properly.
>
> I can think of 2 clear advantages based on James and I's rough
> schedule of 30min+8min talks:
>
> 1. we'd have more time between talks for doing the laptop-cable-swap-waltz,
> 2. we might have enough time for another talk or two

It's hard to fit questions into a 30-minute slot. On the other hand,
having a whole bunch of talks where there's no audience input could
get deadening. I would tend to come down on the side of telling
speakers to leave up to five minutes at the end for questions, if they
want to (but not mandatory). I think reducing it to zero would be
risky. That's OK for lightning talks (like the 8-minute ones) though.

It's also possible for speakers to get audience input via asking
*them* questions, though I know that's a particular presentation
technique that not everyone is comfortable with and that doesn't fit
into every talk.

I know there's concern too about the quality of the questions. I think
that comes with the territory. There's a bit of high risk, high reward
about it. The main thing is for the person with the stopwatch to
intervene and not let it actually go over time. (No smiley there:
that's a real point, and a very tough job.)


David