Chris Lamb wrote... > Here is the salient section from the linked page by Eric Holscher:
Quite frankly, I find this very upsetting. > Let's start with speakers. Many first-time speakers that I know have > an intense anxiety around having the audience ask questions. They > think, "I am going to go up and give a talk, and then someone in the > audience will contradict or embarrass me for lack of knowledge > afterward." Audience questions after talks are one of the biggest > sources of stress for speakers. No doubt this is an issue. BUT: There are other, better ways to deal with it than avoidance: By learning how to handle the situation. Being able to preset your ideas, not necessarily in such a formal event as a DebConf, is a key competence - we'll I'd say in your entire life. So if the first time you give a presentation is a huge hall with several hundred atendees: Tough call. I strongly advise to go into some training: Give the presentation to a few friends first, then perhaps at the local Linux Users Group or something similar. You should do this anyway to check whether your timing is okay. About embarrassing behaviour from the audience: First, this barely ever happens, and unless your talk was about a highly controversial topic you may trust you will not experience anything bad. Enough people in the audience have experience with presenting, they will at least be polite enough to show respect you gave a presentation at all. Giving a presentation is not an exam. And actually it can be a lot of fun - although I learned this many years after school where it always was a nightmare indeed. Having said that: Q&A is a hard moment indeed: You're done with your presentation, somewhat exhausted, and now people ask questions, jumping all across your topic and beyond. Being able to follow reqires some energy. On the other hand, I found Q&A always a refreshing experience since people share other views on an issue, giving completely new ideas about it. And this is why ... > Now for the audience. (...) ... I cannot subscribe this at all. The other part I miss here: What else to do then? Certainly many *want* to discuss the topic of the presentation. Is there any other space where this might happen instead? So perhaps one suggestion for DebConf: Make Q&A optional: > Such an idea could potentially be accomodated in a similar fashion to > the "Record talk? [Y]/n" question for a talk proposal; an "Allow Q&A? > [Y]/n", also defaulting to "yes". +1 Christoph
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