Thanks Lodewijk for bringing this up.
I had several discussions in the past, mostly when it was about the future of Wikimania, when I told people that 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 and I think it worked well. The concept is simple:
* there are only 45 minutes sessions (with only one topic) plus a 15 minutes time buffer for sessions not ending on time, people changing rooms, grabbing coffee on their way etc.
* this makes a schedule with a simple 1 hour grid
* due to the 15 minutes allowance in each session we skip any coffee breaks - there is coffee break available at all times, from breakfast to dinner
* instead, to give people some time to rest we added a 30 minutes break where no sessions were going on half way between lunch and dinner. This was not just a coffee break, it was meant to allow people to go outside, catch some fresh air, have a nap or similar.
* there were only three tracks of talks (okay, for Wikimania I would do up to five - but no more) plus workshops (real hands on sessions, partly in labs) which were longer (~ half a day)
* there was one room near the coffee table with a pin board and an empty schedule in front, where people could pick a card, write down a topic and pin it on the schedule, to reserve the open space for a spontaneous meeting - like the break sessions we were having at Wikimania
Example: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiCon_2012/Programm/Programmraster
I know that my ideas are not welcomed so much, I have been told so many times that it would be inefficient use of everyone's time to reduce the program so much, that there were so many great submissions we really must put into the schedule and that we need many, many parallel tracks just to make sure we have small enough groups in each sessions to be realistic. Still, I am not convinced by these arguments.
* How many people could not attend sessions they wanted to attend, just because they were in parallel / they couldn't make it due to something else that kept them away?
* How many sessions were too short and the time was up when they just felt that they were starting to be effective?
I am a strong believer that less is actually more. I would like to have a less stressful but more effictive Wikimania.
Thanks,
Manuel
Am 14.08.2013 09:39, schrieb Lodewijk:
reading back through my mailbox, I encountered huge amounts of announcements (mostly by Wikimedia Deutschland) about events taking place in breaks of Wikimania. Without wanting to form an opinion about that just yet, I would like to ask what you think about having many side events going on in the break/breakfast/evening.
I personally am a bit caught between wanting to do as much as possible in the limited time, and feeling that there was basically no break at all (contributing to the exhaustion), because every break people were basically asking you to attend break sessions. For some of them that is the only choice (they intend to be informal), others probably belong primarily in the schedule (assuming they were interesting).
Anyway, just a conversation starter to evaluate the concept of break events a bit more in general (I assume the chapters village etc in particular will be evaluated separately too).
Looking forward to your thoughts,