Hi Stephan, Am 23.03.2014 09:51, schrieb Stephan Schulz: > On the other hand, I would prefer to have a tighter, more > focussed, and better structured program. Breaks should > be breaks, sessions should be strictly time-boxed, session > chairs should be in control of timing, and maybe the rate > of acceptance of talks should be stricter. While I > like the bazaar-like atmosphere, it made it very hard to > get to talks in time, and very frustrating for speakers > who had to deal with large audience fluctuations much of
I fully agree with that and want to support that. Since several years I am fighting an invisible war against "programmeritis" Wikimania has fallen for. * have less talks, focus on quality and that people are actually able to digest the information - less is more! * have a clear, simple schedule. Not several talks in the same slot. It is unmanagable, the time is never shared fairly, people can hardly move between talks happening in the same slot. So you are bound to decide for one slot and than hear all two / three talks before the next break where you can move again. In the conferences I have organized my worked with a very simple schedule: * every slot is exactly one hour, but the talks are only 45 minutes, the rest is headroom for discussions, break time, time to move rooms, prepare the next talk etc. * workshop may last several slots to allow a more indepth-treatment of a topic * to make up for the time there are no coffee breaks etc. - instead coffee and drinks are available in a free space somewhere near the workshop rooms, so people can a) have a drink or snack whenever they want b) we save the time for these breaks c) less crowded cafeteria / buffets as people come at different times * to allow people to relax one could think about an afternoon break where deliberately nothing is being offered, that allows people to really have a break - and they don't even need to rush to the cafeteria to get their coffee in that time, we normally scheduled 30 minutes for that in midway between Lunch and Dinner * to cater for informal / on the spot meetings an "Open Space" was offered, a session room adjacent to the other rooms, ideally right next to the coffee buffet, where one can put a pinboard in an area everyone walks by several times during the day. Cards, felt-tip pens, pins and a printed schedule with empty slots are being provided. So people write down their topic and "schedule" it by pinning it in one of the empty slots. Instead of having meetings right on the spot and somewhere on the floor in the hallway, they are a bit more structured, allow for some time to gather people, other people can become interested and join and a real, quite session room with proper chairs and tables can be used for an efficient meeting. This concept in has lead to less stressful conferences. People are more free what to do, when to relax and have a coffee and are more concetrated during the actual sessions - which also have a bit more time. It has also shown that there is only little problems with sessions taking to long, blowing up the schedule, because there is enough headroom to absorb this. /Manuel -- Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
