All,
You know, each year we tinker with some aspect of EclipseCon
trying to make it better. This year, it’s the short talk –
long talk balance.
I think our gut reaction to less long talks is no…we need more
time to present our technology!! But I really think we need to try this.
Short talks take less prep time, and they have a better potential to hold
people’s attention. I went to a lot of long talks last year that
were just too detailed to be helpful. If our goal is to expose the
audience to as much technology as possible, then short talks are a great venue.
That being said, I agree with Doug S on grouping. As we
talked about once already, the plan is for the Track Lead to recommend the
ordering of their talks. This should include short talk grouping.
Doug
From:
eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Bjorn Freeman-Benson
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 11:53 AM
To: Eclipsecon Program Committee list
Subject: Re: [eclipse.org-eclipsecon-program-committee] Budget and slot
allocations
Chris,
Given that the cost is the same for 5 shorts versus 1 long, the Program
Committee can make that trade-off.
However, I disagree with your statement that "conference goers would
benefit more from more long talks". One of the main purposes of EclipseCon
is to get the community together to talk to each other. EclipseCon is *not* a
rock star style conference where we have the experts lecturing to the masses.
One of the advantages of short talks is to provide a lot more opportunity for
the community members to speak to the rest of the community members. I don't
want to see a conference where we have the same N Eclipse Top-Level Project
team members and the same N Web Tools team members and the same N BIRT team
members talking about their work. There's a lot more going on under the Eclipse
umbrella than just the core. The core is important (that's why there are long
talks and tutorials) but the rest is important too.
Also note that there are effectively the same number of long talks and short
talks if you note that there are 80 tutorials (very long talks) and 80 long
talks (= 160) and that tutorials are free this year. So everyone gets to go to
the 160 long talks and everyone gets to go to the 160 short talks.
- Bjorn
Chris Aniszczyk wrote:
How about less short talks and more long
talks/tutorials? That seems like a lot of short talks where I think conference
goers would benefit more from more long talks.
