Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)
Chris Lamb writes ("Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)"):
> I noticed yesterday [0] that the PyCascades conference [1] explicitly
> does not permit any questions and answers after a presentation.
This is interesting.
As an audience member I have sometimes found myself intensely
irritated when (it seems to me that) a questioner is wasting
everyone's time with some incomprehensible polemic, or whatever.
Often when this happens I feel the speaker does not shut them down
quickly enough. I think the speaker is perhaps not always sure enough
of their ground to do so.
I think this could be addressed by having a moderator who was prepared
to make a value judgement about the question, and who had a low
threshold for intervening.
In general I often find that stronger moderation (of audience
participation in talks and panels, and of airtime in BOFs) is a good
thing.
However, I would be very sad to see questions banned entirely.
Some of my best experiences at DC18 were related to questions. Talks
with small audiences or in small rooms often turn in a kind of BOF
session which can be both very useful, and very affirming for
everyone.
And speaking entirely personally: When giving a talk, especially about
new software or anything complicated, i find it can be very helpful to
be interrupted if I have skipped over something. I'm aware of the
questioner self-selection problem. I don't feel unsure, so I don't
need help from a moderator in managing the questions I might get :-).
Overall, perhaps we could ensure that we have a moderators available,
certainly for the larger rooms, and also whenever the speaker requests
it.
The moderator could have a quick chat with the speaker about how much
support they want, whether the speaker wants to take questions during
the talk, at the end, or not at all, etc. Ideally moderators would
have been exposed to some kind of training or at least briefing.
The "go up to the stage afterwards" format for questions is a good one
too, though. Certainly it should be offered to speakers, and
sometimes even recommended. Speakers should certainly not feel that
they are expected to take questions in the standard "talk to the whole
room" format, if they feel intimidated by that idea.
I think, the bigger the room, the more appropriate it is to use the
"chat up at the stage" format.
Another possibility would be for the moderator to use the per-room irc
channel to collect people who want to ask questions. That is, people
would state their question in irc, and the moderator would tell, again
in irc, who the next person is to ask a question. So the moderator
could choose the best questions.
Ian.
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