RE: my reflections on next symposia

Hi all

I was able to be on the seminar as a spectator and agree with the comments the other group members have made.  Obviously there were some problems with the speakers not speaking slowly or clearly enough, and some technical issues.  However, I would have preferred Simon's suggestion of not having the speakers present their papers that we'd already read, but would have preferred just to have the ability to ask questions.  Or mayibe, people could pre-submit questions after reading the abstracts?  The slides in my opinion, did not add much to the event, other than providing something visual to look at besides your own screen.

As usual, for me the time is a problem - was after 1am when I left the call.  However, I felt that the seminar was worth staying up for and I heard some interesting ideas.  Thanks for all the hard work getting this done.  I'd like to think I could add more to a future event.

Regards

Vivienne L. Conway, B.IT(Hons)
PhD Candidate & Sessional Lecturer, Edith Cowan University, Perth, W.A.
Director, Web Key IT Pty Ltd.
v.conway@ecu.edu.au
v.conway@webkeyit.com
Mob: 0415 383 673

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________________________________________
From: Simon Harper [simon.harper@manchester.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, 7 December 2011 1:42 AM
To: giorgio brajnik; RDWG
Subject: Re: my reflections on next symposia

Thanks for these Giorgio, I think it went well but these changes would
be good. I was also thinking maybe we should not let people present -
but work up 3 questions based on each abstract first, instead of just
presenting the abstracts or slides authors would answer these questions
before a wider Q&A?

Cheers

Si.

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=======================
Simon Harper
http://simon.harper.name/about/card/

University of Manchester (UK)
Web Ergonomics Lab - Information Management Group
http://wel.cs.manchester.ac.uk


On 06/12/2011 10:59, giorgio brajnik wrote:
> Hi to everybody.
>
> Since it's still fresh in my mind I'm going to utter my feelings about
> yesterday's event and how next ones could be improved.
> First of all, I'm happy that despite the initial mishaps we were able to
> carry it out decently well.
> Second, I think there is plenty of room for improving.
> Third, thank you to those that participated and to those that spoke
> during the event.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
>
> Giorgio
>

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Received on Thursday, 8 December 2011 10:58:15 UTC