I've been to three Wikimanias but not the last two, so my comments may be
out of date. But the format where you have multiple concurrent threads each
with three talks run one after another between breaks quickly gets out of
sync. It really needs a strong session moderator in each room who can end
things on schedule, otherwise it can be very unfair to the third presenter
who sometimes finds that the first two have each taken a third of their
time. Also it is impossible to plan your day to attend multiple sessions
across threads, especially if between two breaks you want to see the first
session in thread 1 the second session of thread two and the third of
thread 3.
I think that a radical change would be to cut back on the plenaries a bit,
and have more breaks and maybe more threads. A format where we had a break
after each session, or at worst each pair of sessions, would mean no
presenter was in that awkward third slot, and it would increase the all
important break time, but with more presentations overrunning into breaks.
On 15 August 2013 07:51, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 15 August 2013 00:03, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Wikimania should have less parallel sessions,
< longer sessions with more time between the sessions
> and an "open space" as an additional track.
<>
> We implemented this idea last year at the
WikiCon...
<> I am a strong believer that less is actually more. I would like
to have
a less
stressful but more effictive Wikimania.
Your ideas are welcomed by me :) I've been wanting fewer sessions at
Wikimania for a long time.
I agree totally. We can rethink the traditional program entirely.
Imagine a Wikimania where
* the only "talks" or presentations are Plenary sessions
* all other sessions
** have their documents/drawings/slides/tools published 2 weeks in
advance, for others to read / comment / link
** have Q&A handled online in advance of the event (via comments and
discussion)
** are group discussions or collaborations around a topic, not one-way
presentations
** are moderated by someone who is good at moderation (this may or may
not be the primary author of works being discussed)
** update the latest documentation about those ideas/projects/tools
live, during the session (via a designated facilitator/editor)
I dunno. That sounds fundamentally unwiki, and an awful lot like the
professional annual meetings that everyone hates attending. It weighs
heavily in favour of "professional" presenters and those who think that the
powerpoint is more important than the presentation. I wouldn't spring for a
plane ticket for something like this.
As it is, I know for a fact that most of the sessions presented this year
were finalized no more than a week before their presentation, and quite a
few included "up to the minute" information and data. This is particularly
important in an environment that is constantly changing.
What I'd like to see is live-streaming of sessions with moderation that
could include online questions for the sessions.
Wikimania is primarily a social event - and that includes the "developer
days" at the beginning. Some sessions are of professional quality, some
others gain their energy from the presentation itself or the perceived
importance of the topic, and others simply by being presented by sincere
and caring community members. The best session I saw this year was one
that would never meet the bars described above - it was about the Javanese
Wikipedia, and it was the one that was so full of hope and joy at the
prospect of sharing knowledge freely that the few of us who were in the
room walked away with a refreshed sense of what our movement is all about.
You can't capture that with slides or plenary sessions or expert
moderation. You need to be in the room.
Risker
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