Re: my reflections on next symposia

I also agree with Giorgio on most of them, please see my comments below.

On 6 Dec 2011, at 12:59, giorgio brajnik wrote:
> Pro's
> 
> 1. a two hour slot is good so that many people can participate without
> clogging their schedule
> 2. the panel run on the basis a few predefined questions is also a good
> thing
> 3. good to have a page with papers, slides, captions.
> 4. it's a good idea to provide participants with an individual code so
> that zakim can tell the name of the person that is speaking or that
> raised hand.

I think IRC could have been used more efficiently. Would it be possible to send participants instructions for IRC so that all participants can join the IRC? For example, questions, notes, comments can be recorded via IRC.

5. I would also like to add that captioning was great, I really liked the captioning and how it was done.

> 
> Con's
> 
> 1. initial presentations were too long. Next time I would ask authors to
> give a short presentation of themselves (1 minute long) and that is. The
> end result is to give more space to the panel and to the global Q&A part.

I think they were far too long and difficult to follow. I also think questions could be asked right after the presentations.

> 2. 1000-word long abstracts are ok. Next time I would ask authors to
> provide also a 2-3 slide summary of their work (for participants that do
> not feel like they have to read all the abstracts), but not ask authors
> to present the slides.

That's a good idea.

> 3. 11 participants were too many; next time I would go for about 8
> people. This should also increase the quality and the cohesiveness of
> the event.

I agree, I think the topics were also so broad that it made it difficult to follow. Hopefully next time submissions will be more focused on the seminar topic so that they will all be closely related.

> 4. the panel and the final Q&A part were ok, but there was too little
> interaction between panelists and also between panelists and public. It
> might have had something to do with the machinery for raising hands,
> handling "the mic", following a somewhat rigid schedule for who was
> going to talk when. I feel this was the major defect of yesterday's
> event. We need to make these events more interactive.

I think interactivity is very important. Otherwise, people can loose their focus and don't follow the seminar at the end. Its better to keep the presentations short and increase the discussion aspect at the end. Discussion part can also be structured, for example, panel, QA session, a list of discussion points can be created and all participants can give their view on those discussion points (if they would like to contribute to the discussion) -- This could also related to the structure of the note that will be created at the end. 

> 5. in addition to a person that leads/moderates the event, we need at
> least another person that handles zakim. And both these persons should
> have a backup so that if they suddenly disappear the backup person can
> continue the event.

I think backup is very important.

> 6. next time I would ask speakers to join the conference 30 minutes in
> advance and make sure that their settings is ok for talking and hearing.

I think this is not possible. That means people need to spend 2:30 hours, may be 15 minutes before is doable but half an hour is too long.

> 7. it could be good to provide participants with another info channel
> (like a twitter code) to let them to tell something to
> chairs/panelists/audience.

I think IRC is a good way for communication and for recording communication points.

Regards,
Yeliz Yesilada.

Received on Tuesday, 6 December 2011 11:22:10 UTC