Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Samuel Thibault writes ("Re: Questions after talks at DebConf (idea)"):
> Matthew Vernon, le sam. 08 sept. 2018 15:41:14 +0100, a ecrit:
> > Moderators happy/able to cut people off who aren't really
> > asking a question seems a better solution than banning all questions.
> 
> But the speaker can not be sure that it will happen.

Indeed.

I can definitely see that this is very plausibly a problem (although I
haven't read research or even spoken personally to speakers who are
worried about this).

I am very keen that we should fully support speakers who are not so
sure of themselves.  Those people often have the most interesting
things to say and we need to give them the space, encouragement, and
structure things to minimise this kind of worry.

What this certainly means is that we must provide different support
and perhaps a different approach for different speakers in different
contexts.

I don't know how best to ask the question of a speaker, what kind of
support they need, but certainly the conference management system is
an opportunity to do that.  Also we could publicly state, in our CFP
for example, what our plans will be - so that people can be confident
that they will be welcomed and supported.

Ian.

-- 
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