I opened a bug regarding the main stage events. See
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=242940
Jeff
Scott Rosenbaum wrote:
All,
I have a short EclipseCon 2009 status report.
Categories
For the most part the categories
are the same as last year with two new additions. Kevin McGuire
has agreed to represent a new category dedicated to E4. I realize that
many of the E4 concepts will cross the existing category boundaries.
The idea will be that Kevin will work with the other category reps to
get that Goldilocks mixture of E4 content in next years conference.
The other new category is the Runtime Conference. As you probably
know, Runtime is now a top level project, Jeff McAffer will be the
representative for the various runtime projects.
Agenda
I have created a proposed
agenda for next year as a Google spread-sheet. At this point these
are proposed changes for next year. The reason that I am sending this
out now is to solicit your feedback on these changes. If you feel
strongly about the proposed changes, let me know it is definitely not
too late to change.
Less
is More
Based
on feedback from last year, we are reducing the total number of
concurrent tracks. Tutorials we go from 20 to 16. Standard days is
moving from 9 to 8 conncurrent tracks. Our hope is to have better
attendence and better quality of talks. This will mean that the number
of allocations for each category will go down. In terms of total
hours of talks we will lose 18 hours of talks.
Main
Stage Talks
It
is difficult to hold talks in the Main Stage room, imagine having a
room for 800 and having only 50 or so attendees (awkward). That said,
there are certainly a number of talks where we want to have a large
room. Main Stage talks are one hour talks that will be held in the
Main Stage room, this is a place for the category reps to put their
very best speakers giving the most popular talks.
Short
Talks => Moderated Sessions
Last year the short talks really seemed to catch on. The short
talks had good attendence and good evaluations. This year the plan is
to increase the number of short talk slots and to re-brand them as
moderated sessions. Moderated sessions will be organized by one person
(the moderator) who will develop a theme and recruit speakers around
that theme. The moderator is also free to select and trade talks to
create a better theme.
My idea on workflow is that the moderator will create the session using
the submission system and then talks can be either submitted directly
under the session or assigned to a session by the category reps. The
sessions will appear in the program committee with both the theme and a
description of the short talks. The idea is to have an hour of closely
related interesting content. The moderator can change the timing
within the short talk to match his or her goals. For example, a
moderator could change it to be 3 10 minute sessions with a 20 minute
panel.
There is a moderated
sessions bugzilla entry if you would like to weigh in on the
subject.
Four
Hour Tutorials
We have always aimed for the tutorials to have a hands on
element. Last year, the feedback was that many of the 2 hour tutorials
were nothing more than long long talks. That said, it is difficult to
be able to do any meaningful hands on work in two hours. The other
problem was that even if tutorials are labeled as part 1 and part 2,
people inevitably showed up for part 2 without having done the work in
part 1, which is disruptive for the speaker. I would like to go back
to four hour tutorials with the idea that there is a significant hands
on component to the time slot.
At the conference, I spoke with a couple of firms that offer commercial
training. The response was that these firms would be happy to provide
their commercial courses at EclipseCon free of charge. How does
everyone feel about featuring some commercial tutorials?
Allocations
So this is the part that really matters, how many slots did my
category get?
On page
two of the spread-sheet I have provided a proposed allocation of
the available slots to the categories. I have also included an
analysis comparison with the actual talks presented for the 2008
conference. You will probably all note that the number of talks in
your category has gone down. This is the result of three things: a)
two new categories (E4 and Runtime), b) one less concurrent track, c)
the use of a Reserved category.
What in the world is the Reserved Category? I'm glad you asked. The
reserved category sets aside approximately 20% of the available long
talks, main stage talks, and tutorials. The idea will be that the
category reps will use up all of their allocated slots as they see fit
with their best talks. They will then nominate the best of the rest
for consideration by the entire committee. The committee will vote on
those talks that they feel will make for the best program. I have
created a reserved
categegory bugzilla entry to get your feedback on the idea.
If you feel that your category has been significantly short changed in
the allocation process, I would be happy to discuss what we can do to
fix the situation. I have created an allocation
bugzilla here if you would like to lobby for changes in the
proposed program allocations.
Submission System
Gabe is hard at work on our new submission system. One of the
questions that has come up is whether there is a need for the category
reps to be able to discuss the merits of a particular submission in a
private channel that is not visible to the community at large or the
submitter. I could go either way, but am leaning towards a no vote
even though I think that it may be useful. If you have thoughts on the
subject, I have created an Enable
Private Comments in Submission System bugzilla.
Keynotes
I have a page full of keynote ideas and have begun contacting
people on the page. If you have thoughts or comments, please let me
know. There are a lot of great talks out there, but I have not found
the perfect combination of: inspiration, entertainment, and affordable
yet but I am getting closer.
First Meeting
The first general conference call is scheduled for August 5 at
9:00
CDT. At that point I hope to have the keynotes locked down and the
allocations finalized. Should be a short call, we will just be
reviewing the schedule and answering any questions.
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