Questions?

[Chris Lowis]

Hello! 

I was chatting to a few people last night about the topic of conference questions to speakers, and how we'd like to handle that at the manor. A few things that people dislike about the "traditional" 10-minutes-for-questions format mentioned to me last night were:

i) It takes up speakers time, which might be better used for a longer presentation

ii) Rambling questions which go no-where and seem designed to boost the ego of the person asking the question

iii) It's hard to hear questions when they are asked

iv) The "wrong" questions are asked

We also came up with some examples of how we could handle questions differently:

i) Questions by twitter - forces them to be short and pre-moderated by the speaker 

ii) Questions by microphone with a time or word limit on the questioner 

iii) Collect questions on paper or a white board and have them all answered at the end of the day - panel style. 

iv) A question voting app in vestibule. 

v) No questions at all. Just ask them in the pub or at lunch. 

Some of the above have obvious technical challenges, especially given the constraints on wi-fi and the desire to keep laptops at a minimum, but perhaps we can work around this somehow.

Any thoughts? 

Cheers, 

Chris 

 

[Richard Drake]

Not easy to answer without knowing length of presentation. But I would
stick with discouraging laptops, which means i) and iv) in the second
list are ruled out. It would be good to have (>=1) whiteboard. But
also cards to write on during talks - so Blu-Tack might be useful at
the boards (wall?) as well as pens, as much as is allowed by the host.

Panel-type sessions don't have to be at the end of the day. It's often
better to have one of the most-wanted presentations last. With just
two mikes, at the front and somewhere in the back, one can get a lot
going even in a big hall. But I don't know the room and the total
numbers and thus how easy it would be to get to a fixed mike to ask a
question.

I was just writing this when Chris mentioned using lunch in birds-of-
feather mode, which is very in line with my other thought, which was
how to make the most of lunch.

[Kerry Buckley]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Richard Drake <rdra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not easy to answer without knowing length of presentation. But I would
> stick with discouraging laptops, which means i) and iv) in the second
> list are ruled out.

Not necessarily. How many people in the audience are likely to not
have a twitter-capable phone?

Kerry

[Anthony Green]

On 11/10/2011 10:04, "Chris Lowis" wrote:

> i) Questions by twitter - forces them to be short and pre-moderated by the
> speaker
> ii) Questions by microphone with a time or word limit on the questioner
> iii) Collect questions on paper or a white board and have them all answered at
> the end of the day - panel style.
> iv) A question voting app in vestibule.
> v) No questions at all. Just ask them in the pub or at lunch.

For me anyone of those would be preferable to having them asked 10 mins at
the end, for exactly the reasons you outlined.

--
Anthony Green
Apprentice Developer : BBC Future Media
Developer Evangelist : Developer Outreach Group

http://www.bbc.co.uk/
This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated.
If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system.
Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately.
Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received.
Further communication will signify your consent to this.

[Richard Drake]

I think there's a big difference between people tweeting out to say
what's
going on at the conference - for which a smartphone is ideal - and
trying
to collate questions intra-conference via tweets. If the intra-conf
debate
is going on this way it will I think tend to encourage laptops to be
flipped
open. If the focus is a physical surface nearby with people milling
around
it then the laptop doesn't come out of the bag or possibly the home.

As for the tablet device, who knows. Cool questions to have.

On Oct 11, 11:18 am, Kerry Buckley <kerryjbuck...@gmail.com> wrote:

[James Adam]

I think this is a really great thing to be thinking about - the "questions" part of a conference is definitely ripe for improvement. Here are my few thoughts:

I do think questions are valuable. The spirit of the Manor is clearly about involvement, and an event were questions were prohibited would contradict the explicit terms and conditions that everyone agreed to when they bought a ticket ("I promise not to sit on my arse..."). But clearly some questions end up being more valuable than others, so the key is going to be trying to encourage relevant, focussed and interesting questions and minimise the impact of those that are... less interesting, relevant and focussed.

I don't think it can rely on any technology. There will be some wifi at the venue, but we can't guarantee it, nor can we guarantee phone reception, and it would be a real crime to exclude anyone who *didn't* bring a device from asking any questions. For the latter reason alone, I think it would be better not to rely on a technological aspect to improve signal-to-noise on questions.

I'm not hugely fond of saving all questions until the end of the day - I know that I'd forget or lose impetus to ask things as the day progressed, and I also think it's a bit of a weird ending to the conference. "Will I ask a question, or will I head to the pub?" is a thought that goes through many people's minds...

So I think I'd prefer something more like a fairly firm policy of limiting the length of your question. If we have a couple of volunteers with microphones who are roaming the room, they can also act as arbiters in this respect. If your question hasn't gotten to the point after, say, 20 seconds, they'll be empowered to simply take the mic back and we'll move on. That might seem a bit harsh, but maybe something along those lines would strike the best balance between inclusiveness and editorial control?

With that in mind, I also think we can streamline the questions section with a few instructions that everyone follows. Something like:

- if you have a question, stand up so the microphone volunteers can find you and get you ready with a mic. Do this even while the other questions are being asked, so we waste as little time between questions as possible

- you only get one followup/clarification question unless there's nobody else waiting to ask a question

... something like that?

- James

--
http://rubymanor.org
Group home: http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-manor?hl=en
Unsubscribe at ruby-manor+...@googlegroups.com

[Sean O'Halpin]

I was thinking along the same lines except I reckon a single
authoritative chairperson/MC (James/Murray?) to chivvy things along
would work better than having the mic assistants do it.

As long as the rules were made explicit up front, I can't see how
anyone would object.

What about interruptions during the talks? Do we want to ban them altogether?

Regards,
Sean

[James Adam]

On 11 Oct 2011, at 13:34, Sean O'Halpin wrote:

> I was thinking along the same lines except I reckon a single
> authoritative chairperson/MC (James/Murray?) to chivvy things along
> would work better than having the mic assistants do it.

Sounds good; it needn't be either of us, but having a single person is probably simplest.

> As long as the rules were made explicit up front, I can't see how
> anyone would object.

Yeah, I think we'd have to explain and remind.

> What about interruptions during the talks? Do we want to ban them altogether?

I'd personally be happy for this to be the individual presenter's preference, as long as they explicitly made it clear at the start.

- James

[Richard Drake]

On Oct 11, 1:21 pm, James Adam <ja...@lazyatom.com> wrote:
>
> I do think questions are valuable. The spirit of the Manor is clearly about involvement, and an event were questions were prohibited would contradict the explicit terms and conditions that everyone agreed to when they bought a ticket ("I promise not to sit on my arse..."). But clearly some questions end up being more valuable than others, so the key is going to be trying to encourage relevant, focussed and interesting questions and minimise the impact of those that are... less interesting, relevant and focussed.

It's important to remember that it's the value of the question and
answer pair that matters. A dumb question can receive a great answer,
indeed that's a gift that some people have in interaction, more than
others. This also puts the onus where it should be. You don't want
everyone to think "I'm too dumb to ask an adequate question here". The
best questions are seldom from the people who think they are the most
expert.

>
> I don't think it can rely on any technology. There will be some wifi at the venue, but we can't guarantee it, nor can we guarantee phone reception, and it would be a real crime to exclude anyone who *didn't* bring a device from asking any questions. For the latter reason alone, I think it would be better not to rely on a technological aspect to improve signal-to-noise on questions.

You have to start somewhere in designing the interactive side of Ruby
Manor and this is where I would start. The person who just brings
their old Nokia from 2000 should not be penalised (as long as it
doesn't play the Mission Impossible theme in the middle of a talk!)

>
> I'm not hugely fond of saving all questions until the end of the day - I know that I'd forget or lose impetus to ask things as the day progressed, and I also think it's a bit of a weird ending to the conference. "Will I ask a question, or will I head to the pub?" is a thought that goes through many people's minds...

I'm also against saving questions till the end, which is very often an
anti-climax. Put on one of the most-wanted presentations last. That's
a more 'democratic' way almost certainly. (I won't give the argument
for that but it might be worth having one day.)


But in any case, I think James that you're arguing for questions at
the end of every session? Is that right?

I certainly agree that willingness to be interrupted by questions
should be down to the individual presenter. I also think some
presenters probably have their hands full to fit in the allotted time
without any questions at all. This should also be a valid option -
stated not just at the start of the talk but before that, on
Vestibule.

And that I think is what we've been missing out. Once the sessions
selected are known it would be possible to start to prepare questions
on Vestibule. Questions that are meant to be answered (ideally) by a
wider group than just the presenter of one talk, in other words.

Such questions will I'm sure come to people's minds during talks and
during informal interactions during the day. That's the point of the
whiteboard/wall and associated low-tech appliances.

Having a whiteboard/wall does not imply you have to do some kind of
panel or goldfish-bowl session but it does tend in that direction. But
not at the end (in my view).

If I was forced to choose now I would go for a goldfish-bowl type
discussion right after the afternoon break, based on questions written
on or stuck on the whiteboard/wall. Those in the goldfish bowl would
be free to select the topics they find the most interesting. The
presence of this in the agenda would reduce pressure on presenters to
use their precious minutes on instant questions. But I'm not ruling
those out.

[Guillermo AF]

One thing that seems to work for me was using google moderator for the questions.

At the end of the presentation, the 3 questions with more points get his response.

https://www.google.com/moderator/

--
Guillermo Álvarez

[Chris Lowis]

There's loads of great ideas in this thread. I wonder if we could almost conduct a kind of social experiment - a different style of fielding questions for each talk, and then a write-up/blog post after the fact where we summarise what worked and what didn't? 

Cheers, 

Chris 

[James Adam]

On 11 Oct 2011, at 15:33, Richard Drake wrote:

> On Oct 11, 1:21 pm, James Adam <ja...@lazyatom.com> wrote:
>>
>> I do think questions are valuable. The spirit of the Manor is clearly about involvement, and an event were questions were prohibited would contradict the explicit terms and conditions that everyone agreed to when they bought a ticket ("I promise not to sit on my arse..."). But clearly some questions end up being more valuable than others, so the key is going to be trying to encourage relevant, focussed and interesting questions and minimise the impact of those that are... less interesting, relevant and focussed.
>
> It's important to remember that it's the value of the question and
> answer pair that matters. A dumb question can receive a great answer,
> indeed that's a gift that some people have in interaction, more than
> others. This also puts the onus where it should be. You don't want
> everyone to think "I'm too dumb to ask an adequate question here". The
> best questions are seldom from the people who think they are the most
> expert.

Without drawing on any specific anecdotes, what I'd hope everyone who asks a question will understand and respect is that they should try and ask their question directly and succinctly. Don't use the time to impress everyone with how clever or knowledgeable you are about the topic.

> But in any case, I think James that you're arguing for questions at
> the end of every session? Is that right?

Correct; if there's a compelling argument to separate questions from the proposal, I'd be interested to hear it.

- James

[Richard Drake]

Just from memory ...

"A few things that people dislike about the "traditional" 10-minutes-
for-questions format mentioned to me last night were:

i) It takes up speakers time, which might be better used for a longer
presentation
ii) Rambling questions which go no-where and seem designed to boost
the ego of the person asking the question
iii) It's hard to hear questions when they are asked
iv) The "wrong" questions are asked "

I think there are often good reasons to separate questions from the
session that prompts them. These four aren't all. Others would be the
size of the group (which looks like it's going to be close to 180),
the fact that there may be people better able to answer a particular
question than the speaker and the fact that some questions are best
not attempted at all in a day like this, which can be dealt with more
easily in a written-only system.

There are of course moments when an interrupting question helps the
presenter and thus the audience considerably, by pointing out, for
example, something that's not clear to many. That's why it's not easy
to make hard and fast rules. Another advantage of questions at the
time is the speaker being able to refer to projected material in
answering.

Even if every speaker elects to take questions maximally, as many as
interrupt and giving bundles of time at the end for more, there can be
value in a panel-style session, so I don't think it's a complete
either-or.

However, I do think Ruby Manor should consider going mostly for
written questions and a goldfish-bowl-style session - but not at the
end of the day. If I get time tomorrow I'll jot down some rules and
reasons for what I'm proposing.

[Richard Drake]

I just have a few moments now so let me quickly define terms and
shoot.

Goldfish bowl: where all the conversation is between those on stage
(or in the middle of the room around a table in smaller gatherings).
In classic goldfish bowl people leave the table and others join as the
conversation continues.

Part of my motivation for suggesting this is better use of microphones
and camera. Mikes would be passed between those wishing to speak at
the front. They'd be no attempt to give voice to those in auditorium
(sorry). This way in a low budget event the cameraman only has one
place to point and has a good chance of capturing body language as
well as sound.

The feed-in to the goldfish bowl would be written questions, as
discussed already. You could also let a select group know to sit at
the front for this session in the hope of getting them to the table to
ask their question or make their contribution.

It's more elitist but it would allow the best questions to be
selected, for there to be much better continuity of discussion and a
miuch better result for many in the auditorium and those watching the
video afterwards.

This is driven partly by the size of the group. 180 people. Great
problem to have. Well done those who have achieved it.

[James Adam]

On 12 Oct 2011, at 18:04, Richard Drake wrote:

> The feed-in to the goldfish bowl would be written questions, as
> discussed already. You could also let a select group know to sit at
> the front for this session in the hope of getting them to the table to
> ask their question or make their contribution.

The hope of the "suggestions" aspect of Vestibule was to give presenters a good chance to address these sorts of knowable-in-advance topics as part of the presentation itself.

I suspect that most questions - certainly the sort of questions that I was imagining - will be inspired during the presentation itself, and so can't really be written in advance. My hope (and this is speaking just as me, not in any "official" capacity) is that a few mechanisms could be agreed to hopefully discourage waffling or rambling questioning, but I don't believe it's worth sacrificing spontaneity to achieve that.

To Chris' idea of using a different mechanism for every presentation - while I applaud the desire to experiment and measure, I suspect that it would get quite confusing on the day ("am I allowed to ask a question this time?"), but that could just be my limited imagination...

Ultimately I think it's up to the presenters how they want to handle things. Once the proposals are selected (tomorrow!) they can start to discuss their preferences directly with everyone, via this mailing list.

I'm conscious of this thread only involving a very small number people who all have reasonably strong opinions - in many ways it's an example of the kind of outlier conversation that I'm hoping to avoid in the questions :)

Nobody else have any thoughts?

- James

[James Mead]

> Nobody else have any thoughts?

I don't think there's much wrong with the standard 5 or 10 mins at the end of a talk for asking questions if it is used responsibly. This only goes wrong when people act irresponsibly e.g. asking a question as an excuse for demonstrating your own knowledge, asking a question to mention your name or your company's name, asking a question that was answered in the talk (i.e. not listening carefully to the talk), etc.

Maybe it would be useful to lay out some guidance on what constitutes a responsible question at the beginning of the day - perhaps at the beginning of the first question session - to set the tone for the day.

James.

[Murray Steele]

On 13 October 2011 09:37, James Mead <ja...@floehopper.org> wrote:

> Nobody else have any thoughts?

Maybe it would be useful to lay out some guidance on what constitutes a responsible question at the beginning of the day - perhaps at the beginning of the first question session - to set the tone for the day.

I think some gentle social mechanic might work best here.  For example, if we mention it at the start of the day and re-inforce it with a slide on "rules" for questions to be flashed up during the Q&A sessions, that would keep it fresh.

And then we obviously punish transgressors with extreme violence.

Muz

[Tom Stuart]

On 13 Oct 2011, at 09:37, James Mead wrote:
>> Nobody else have any thoughts?
> I don't think there's much wrong with the standard 5 or 10 mins at the end of a talk for asking questions if it is used responsibly.

I agree. The last thing I want as an audience member is to be distracted by thoughts of the question-submission process; the last thing I want as a potential speaker is to feel that the audience is distracted. Questions at the end of a talk are fine as long as everybody behaves sensibly and respectfully, which I hope is a low bar to set for our community.

> Maybe it would be useful to lay out some guidance on what constitutes a responsible question at the beginning of the day - perhaps at the beginning of the first question session - to set the tone for the day.

My 2p here is that it's a completely egalitarian conference — you can talk to anyone you want during the breaks, at lunchtime, and at the pub afterwards — so if you have a question for a speaker, you'll always have the default option of asking them privately. If you instead choose to ask your question during/after the talk, you should hold yourself to the same basic standard as a speaker: consider your audience. When you ask a question in front of an audience, you are performing the world's tiniest lightning talk. If there's nothing in it for anyone else, it's probably better performed privately.

All this means is that we should each show respect for other people's time, which again should be a low bar.

Cheers,
-Tom

[Richard Drake]

On Oct 13, 8:22 am, James Adam <ja...@lazyatom.com> wrote:

>
> To Chris' idea of using a different mechanism for every presentation - while I applaud the desire to experiment and measure, I suspect that it would get quite confusing on the day ("am I allowed to ask a question this time?"), but that could just be my limited imagination...

I agree totally with this. Keep it as simple as possible, there's
enough experimentation in the Vestibule app and other aspects.

[Richard Drake]

On Oct 13, 10:10 am, Tom Stuart <t...@experthuman.com> wrote:
> On 13 Oct 2011, at 09:37, James Mead wrote:
>
> >> Nobody else have any thoughts?
> > I don't think there's much wrong with the standard 5 or 10 mins at the end of a talk for asking questions if it is used responsibly.
>
> I agree. The last thing I want as an audience member is to be distracted by thoughts of the question-submission process; the last thing I want as a potential speaker is to feel that the audience is distracted. Questions at the end of a talk are fine as long as everybody behaves sensibly and respectfully, which I hope is a low bar to set for our community.

To be clear, with what I was proposing above there's nothing
distracting. If a question occurs to you you have an index card to
write it down on. You can do that the moment the question occurs, at
the end of the talk or later. There's nothing distracting about that,
for either speaker or listener. That's not (for me) the reason to
reject this. The reason to reject it would the lack of spontaneity. I
accept that's a valid reason to stick with a standard model of 5-10
mins at the end of a talk.

>
> > Maybe it would be useful to lay out some guidance on what constitutes a responsible question at the beginning of the day - perhaps at the beginning of the first question session - to set the tone for the day.
>
> My 2p here is that it's a completely egalitarian conference — you can talk to anyone you want during the breaks, at lunchtime, and at the pub afterwards — so if you have a question for a speaker, you'll always have the default option of asking them privately. If you instead choose to ask your question during/after the talk, you should hold yourself to the same basic standard as a speaker: consider your audience. When you ask a question in front of an audience, you are performing the world's tiniest lightning talk. If there's nothing in it for anyone else, it's probably better performed privately.

That's well put. What one can't ever do though is make sure that in
the say ten minutes for questions everyone that wishes to gets to asks
theirs and that questions and answers total exactly ten minutes. Some
presentations will have 'too many' questions and some too few. In the
case of too many there's been some arbitrary selection process for who
gets to do their tiniest lightning talk. Some things cannot be
optimised - the informality and unboundedness of the real world, as
Michael Jackson would say.

Written questions plus goldfish bowl makes the selection of questions
aired publicly less arbitrary. But you lose some spontaneity. You also
gain more continuity of conversation, less gaps (as mikes are moved
around a large gathering). That can lead to more in-depth treatment of
some important topics of wide interest or useless tit-for-tat. Again,
there are limits to optimisation.

I was happy to engage with Chris' original premise (which arose from a
number of people at LRUG, note) but I'm also happy with the 5-10 mins
at the end of each session. Simplicity of the mental model is
certainly a key point.