2013/8/16 Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com:
I suspect we could find a community norm that would work for everyone, and still let attendees reflect on (and comment on!) the meat of a session before it starts. And it certainly won't hurt to invite presenters to do this. It might be good to have a mix of presenters who do and who don't share materials in advance, for comparison.
2013/08/15 Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunaraoc@gmail.com:
I agree that sharing draft presentations by all presenters in advance would enable more productive sessions.
It's helpful if presenters put links to relevant slides/documents/materials/videos on the submission page, that is the page on which the proposed presentation or session was originally submitted to Wikimania program (findable here: http://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Submissions). Many do this but most don't, it seems. It helps people find that stuff before the conference, during the presentation itself, and after the conference, and it can be updated whenever new materials (e.g. videos) become available. It works also for rejected submissions which evolve into lightning talks or other discussions or re-submissions in later years.
On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 3:03 AM, Lodewijk lodewijk@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! For me a clear super-prepared presentation is fun. My head is too clouded to follow and remember long-form nuanced specialized debate, on most topics. Most of Wikimania can be more interactive of course, but I like this concept for a track.
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.
+1 Cheers Arjuna
+1