Thanks to everyone for participating in the first Code4Lib Virtual Lightning
Talks on Friday. In particular, my gratitude goes out to Ed Corrado, Luciano
Ramalho, Michael Appleby, and Jay Luker being the first presenters to try this
scheme for connecting library technologists. My apologies also to those who
couldn’t connect, in particular to Elias Tzoc Caniz who had signed up but found
himself locked out by a simultaneous user count in the presentation system.
Recordings of the presentation audio and screen capture video are now up in the
Internet Archive (search for "Code4Lib Virtual Lightning Talks" or go to the
Code4Lib Wiki page on Virtual Lightning Talks for links).
Some lessons learned. First, people were locked out when they shouldn't have
been. The most we saw online at any particular time as 25, but the room was
supposed to be able to hold 60. I think the problem was how I entered e-mail
addresses into the system to reserve slots for the presenters and the people
who signed up in advance. (Which obviously didn't work because one of the
presenters and at least one of the attendees who signed up in advance didn't
get in.) Should we do this again (see below) I'll try to debug the problem.
Second, some comments I got were about cranky Java applets and applications.
LYRASIS has two conference tools at its disposal -- Java-based Centra and
Flash-based Acrobat Connect -- and I chose Centra because running Flash on
LINUX is an issue. Maybe this will need to be revisited (or maybe there is
another Java-based conference system that can do better).
Third, since we were not limited by space and other timing constraints, can the
five-minutes-per-presenter limit be relaxed? I have mixed feelings about this;
I think defined time limits promote better presentations, but the four
presentations this first go-around went to the end of the five minute time
limit and there was no opportunity for questions or audience interaction.
On the whole, it seemed like a positive experience from my perspective and from
that of the feedback I've received so far. I'm going to start a conversation
thread in Code4LibCon (where all of the Code4Lib meeting planning discussion
takes place) to see if it is worthwhile to do again and to identify what should
be done differently. If you are interested, please consider joining and
contributing to the discussion. Or e-mail me privately and I'll reflect your
comments into the group discussion.
Peter
--
Peter Murray peter.mur...@lyrasis.org tel:+1-678-235-2955
Ass't Director, Technology Services Development http://dltj.org/about/
Lyrasis -- Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers.
The Disruptive Library Technology Jester http://dltj.org/
Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
