2013/8/16 Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>om>:

I agree that sharing draft presentations by all presenters in advance would enable more productive sessions.

> > On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 3:03 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk(a)effeietsanders.org> wrote: > > I also wouldn't be in favor of a lot of plenary sessions > > Ah, to be clear: I don't want to see any /more/ plenary sessions. I > just mean that those sessions would be the only ones that were > traditional performances -- one speaker, a passive audience, few if > any questions. (and even there we might find speakers with more > different approaches.) > > > Something what I *would* like to see changed about the schedule is more > > discussions with experienced discussion leaders. Not like this year when it > > was basically a run-out-time for the session before, but a dedicated track, > > with a dedicated discussion coordinator that puts together the discussion > > track only a few days in advance to ensure that the most recent topics are > > covered too. In that way I hope that you also have an improved experience - > > that track could be somewhat run like you suggested (with someone preparing > > the discussion etc) and should indeed of course be documented! I just don't > > think the whole schedule should be like that. > > A nice framing. Similarly, I would appreciate a track that was > dedicated to speaker-performances: inspiring presentations with no > audience participation. Like a TED-talk track. >

+1 Cheers Arjuna

Hi, it would perhaps also be helpful if we would simply create a table on wikimaniawiki with all sessions, and a column for slides, a column for notes and a column for video. That way people don't have to dig into the different pages and people can quickly see what info is still missing. But then, this has little to do any longer with changing how the tracks work. So getting back to that discussion: Sam: I totally agree to make the differences between tracks more significant. Having a track totally dedicated for round table discussions, having a track for sessions where people can give input/feedback but with very significant presentation parts (like the one about the wikimedia blog), a TED'ish track and a track for panel discussions would be great. There are of course always some exceptions like when they are topically connected (i.e. Wiki Loves Stuff sessions that were helpfully placed together this year). Also, I have always had a preference for less keynote sessions - especially the repeating ones (Jimmy, Sue, Board Q&A). I mean, many agree that the Executive Director & board thing is important, but to be honest, there are many people who find that kind of boring and who would prefer to discuss editing guidelines or learn how to review texts on Wikisource, and view Sue's speech later on video (or not at all). I would be in favor of moving away from keynotes to 'supertalks' which have less parallel competitors, but are not a session for 100% of the audience necessarily. And the board Q&A is definitely more and more dull because it is barely discussion and mostly answering preselected questions asked by a staff member (although some improvement was made this year). Splitting that Q&A up in three sessions with each three board members and a critical panel moderator, parallel to each other could give a much better dynamic and topical focus. It's good to have this discussion! We always shout and brainstorm about it at Wikimania, it just never gets realized it seems... Lodewijk 2013/8/17 Peter B Meyer <pbmeyer22202(a)yahoo.com> _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l

I would prefer more of Wikimania to be interactive and discussion-oriented; perhaps you would prefer more to be presentation-oriented. That's a good tradeoff for a program team to discuss. But presenters could then think consciously about which of these modes they intend to participate in.