[EuroPython] Wiki: Zope track

[Dario Lopez-Kästen]

From: "Paul Everitt" <paul@zope.com>

> I agree with Nicolas.  Here's a different approach:
>
> a. The last five minutes of each presentation is Q&A.  The new speaker
> starts setting up the computer.

I am not sure this will work - it will very disturbing for both the audience
and the current speaker.

> b. 5 minutes of speaker change time should then do it.
>
> Thus, people present for 50 minutes, take five minutes of questions,
> then five minutes of dead time for speaker change.

The problem with this tight schedule is that 5 minutues is really, really a
short time in between sessions.

I mean it takes at least 2-3  minutes for people to leave the room, and then
2-3 minutes for people to get into the room, and this is supposing that
spekaers actually finish on time and that they have dull presentations with
few audience questions.

Spekers do not just appear, talk, answer questions and dissapear. People
approach speakers after the speech, before they can leave the room, people
need to go to the toilet, there is X technical problem, people need to get
something to drink, people need to stretch their legs, need to go and take a
smoke, etc, etc.

And we need to ventilate the room - the air might get stale

Also, and this is perhaps really important, if we are going to have
exhibitors they will require at least a chance for people to visit their
booths. One of the mistakes we made once (another time and story, not
python/zope related) was to have a too tight schedule where exhibitors were
annoyed because visitors hade too little time to attend booths.

There is another side of this - what to do if speakers do not fill up their
session slot? This can be a real problem - waiting 10-15 minutes might not
be that bad if there is a lot people movement or some snack to munge on, but
waiting 30 minutes really sucks. I suggest that any speaker whose
presentation is less than 30 minutes, be put on a longer lightning talk
session instead, and make sure that speakers understand that 30-40 mminutes
is the required lenght of their speech.

All this is of course dependent on how the rooms are laid out, how the
tracks are organised and if there will be exhibitors or not. Will all
sessions related to one track be in the same room as much as possible or
will we try to make some movement and make people mix and meet, distributing
tracks on the available rooms?

I dunno... what do you think? In any event, I think that 5 minutes is REALLY
a short time.

/dario