"Steven Walling"<steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:BANLkTi=TGX+f01W6bjftqO40ORtOuBDa-w@mail.gmail.com... Being in a similar timezone avoided that problem for me, and it was a welcome distraction from RL to watch some of the videos; but I didn't gain anything particular out of it being live because there was no obvious way to interact back. Admittedly I was hampered by being unable to use IRC, but were people on it 'live' during the event? I was tempted to drop a question onto the EtherPad and see if anyone picked it up. I suspect that there actually was a reasonable amount of scope for remote interactivity, just that it wasn't as obvious or well-advertised as it could have been. But since the only advantage to *outputting* media feeds in real-time is if remote viewers can *input* straight back, that's something that would be worth consolidating in the future. --HM

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 8:29 AM, Happy-melon <happy-melon(a)live.com> wrote: I was only really available for the Tech Days, so I guess it's a bit different. However, I dropped in and followed the conversation. It wasn't particularly clear what I was supposed to do with my opinion — the etherpad is generally considered a record of what was said in person, and I wasn't necessarily comfortable adding my own thoughts in there. At the same time, I had mixed results asking questions in the etherpad chat. So I agree with HM that, while it was pretty easy to follow what was going on (and I have to give big props to the people who set it up like that), it wasn't too obvious how I could actually contribute to the discussion. -- Andrew Garrett Wikimedia Foundation agarrett(a)wikimedia.org

All of the UDS meetings are set up the same, with a "fishbowl" of half-a-dozen chairs in the center where the microphone is placed so that audio from the meeting can be streamed live. There are two projector screens in each room, one showing the IRC channel so that external participants can comment and ask questions; the other is generally "tuned" to the Etherpad notes for the session, though it can be showing the Launchpad blueprint or some other document of interest. The team that is running the meeting sits in the fishbowl, while the other attendees are seated just outside of it; sometimes all over the floor and spilling out into the hallway. "Audience" participation is clearly an important part of UDS sessions.

Hi Sumana! Thank you for this very useful summary of the feedback. That goes streight to our Lessons Learned page :) And of course a special thanks to you and Guillome for tirelessly hacking the sessions into etherpad. And of course to Jesse Scott, who took care of the streaming. We would have been lost without you, guys! -- daniel On 19.05.2011 12:59, Sumana Harihareswara wrote: > Thanks for clarifying, Andrew and Happy-melon. I've thought of a few > things we could have done, but were often too busy directly taking > notes to do: > > * Ensured that the speakers actively asked for questions _from IRC and > remote participants_ > * More consistently& explicitly asked for questions via IRC and Etherpad > > Happy-melon, I do believe that posting to wikitech-l is a way to tell > people who are actively seeking MediaWiki-related information -- after > all, they chose to subscribe to the list! But I take your point. For > next time: > > * Include "we want your remote participation, here's how" summary at > the *top* of the hackathon's canonical page -- in this case, at > mediawiki.org > > With folks in the #mediawiki IRC channel, I've also developed some > additional lessons learned/TODOs for next time: > > * Need multiple dedicated notetakers (1 is not enough during > quickly-moving discussions) PLUS a person to actively monitor > IRC/Etherpad/Twitter and explicitly ask for questions and comments, > plus probably another for backup/relief. (Wikimedia's Germany chapter > had attempted to recruit more local hackers as notetakers and couldn't > get them -- perhaps next time!) > * Etherpad makes it unclear how to ask questions -- chat? main body > of the text? Consider a dedicated Etherpad for Q&A, or templated > areas within the notes set aside for questions > * Encourage other people at the conference to get on IRC& Etherpad > and respond to the questions and comments from remote participants > * Consider dedicating discussion time, possibly after each batch of > speakers, for questions and comments from remote and in-person > participants > > I'm glad it was easy to follow what was going on from afar! So it > sounds like this was definitely an improvement over past hackathons in > this respect. Next time: better interactivity. Thank you for the bug > reports. > > Best, > Sumana Harihareswara