Re: [Debconf-team] Planning for the schedule
Moray Allan dijo [Fri, Apr 03, 2009 at 08:10:33PM +0200]:
> > Some talks naturally take less time, some take more. I wonder if we
> > should schedule on 30m granularity with the expectation that talks tend
> > to take two 30m slots. Something to ponder, anyhow.
>
> If this happens, it would be better to keep events in different rooms
> synchronised (perhaps using padding for alignment), to avoid lots of
> people coming in/going out half way through a talk.
Not only that, it will also saves people from getting pissed at having
two choose between half-overlapping sessions - which is usually even
worse than deciding between fully-overlapping.
> > Certainly. I think keynotes should be scheduled at a sensible time,
> > however at least one is likely to be the "welcome to debconf" talk which
> > probably ought to be scheduled as the first talk on the first day, but
> > perhaps not in the first timeslot (iyswim)
>
> This year the first DebConf day is also the Open Day -- so probably
> there should be some kind of more general welcome talk in the first
> slot. (I don't know if any additional welcome event is needed later for
> full attendees.)
Now that you mention the OpenDay...
Uusually, conferences are scheduled following a general plan, repeated
for every day. Say, as this discussion says (and just making things
up), start at 10AM with a keynote, followed by two BoF sessions, then
lunch break 13:30-15:00, then two talks and one BoF, and closing with
yet another keynote.
Anyway... Whatever the format is, we will probably follow a different
logic for OpenDay. I'd guess we will have more keynote-like talks
(i.e. talks meant to inform the public about the current affairs of
Debian regarding $foo), and less BoFs. Of course, given this is at
Extremadura, some BoFs regarding Pure Blends or L10N or whatnot might
be appropriate, but it will quite probably be a less interactive, less
involved day than our regular work days.
> My feeling from what I've seen at a few DebConfs is that it's mostly an
> early-in-the-day thing -- vastly more attendees like to stay up late at
> night hacking and chatting than like to get up early in the morning (and
> most attendees are using their holiday time to come to DebConf).
> There's probably also some influence from the slot order, but I don't
> think adding lots of additional even-earlier talks would make 9 a.m.
> talks reliably attended.
>
> If people sleep through 11 a.m. talks they'll probably sleep until
> lunchtime anyway, but I think that's a much smaller number, so no I
> don't think there would be poor attendance at that time.
This time we will have an extra factor: As you point out in the very
next paragraph, we will have to leave the main venue at 20:00, which
means night-hacking will be possible but limited, and less
common. This can either potentiate the social element of DebConf
(after all, Cáceres will be too hot to hit the streets when the Big
Black Room is painted blue, and we will be forced to eye-to-eye
contact by not having the full hacklabs) or encourage people to wake
up early to make most of the conference. Probably, both things will
happen, with almost-disjoint sets of people taking each path each day
;-)
OTOH... I remember talking with some people during DC8, noticing that
each day less people arrived to the early sessions, and we thought
about a sliding timetable. This might be tricky with a fixed 20:00
closing time, but might be worth a shot. Given attendees will like to
socialize and sleep until late, and each passing day this tends to be
more noticeable, we might want to start the first days at 9:30, two
days later at 10:00, two days later at 10:30. Of course, this is based
on mere guesswork... But I'm sure Andreas Tille (our always-early
statistics-loving German) will have better numbers than myself on
this.
> > talks run from 16:00 to 20:00
>
> As I understand it from César, the main venue will close at 20:00. If
> that's a strict time limit we'd need to stop the talks a while earlier
> than that, or schedule them in the hall in the accommodation block.
Actually, is the sleeping venues fit for hosting both a night hacklab
and a BoF room?
--
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.org - (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244
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