[OSDC Israel] feedbacks from the conference

[Gaal Yahas]

[Gabor]
> > Take the time to write a few senteces about the conference.

I had a lot of fun! For me the hilight was the opportunity to finally
meet Audrey and Larry in person, and work with them in the hackathon.
I'd like to point out that pugs development is very open and anyone
could have found themselves part of that, if they were sufficiently
motivated. It was very exciting. I imagine people with other interests
also had a chance to meet up and do things together, which is part of
what the conf is all about. Thanks Gabor for the insistence on making
this happen!

A few suggestions/observations:

* The organization process, beginning with CFP etc., should probably
  have started about a month earlier than it did. The registration
  window should be longer but end earlier, so there's less stress for
  the organizers about how many people are coming. (Well, of course
  we don't want to deny people attenance completely if they register
  late; that's what the mechanism of early bird discounts is for. But
  pricing *must* be planned and enforced rigidly. If there are one-day
  passes they should be offered at the same time full passes are.

* Speakers can always use more nagging about deadlines.

* Advertisement could have been better. Notices in a few tech
  departments in universities should be posted for each major
  preparation milestone (CFP, registration, whatever).

* For guests coming from abroad, visa preparation should start two
  months before the arrival date.

* The venue was excellent by many criteria (lecture halls, staff
  assistance, wifi).

* Its drawbacks were transportation and location; this influenced how
  people didn't tend to stick around after the talks. Need to find
  ways of getting them to, as the social aspect of the conf has great
  potential which wasn't properly used this time round.

* Dinner must offer places to sit, or people will tend to want to get
  it over with. The food was fine. Next year if we manage to have the
  same sort of dinner with more comfortable seating, plus manage to
  squeeze wine into the budget, it would be a big success.

* It was a corageous decision to make the conference three days this
  year, from one day in past ones. I think we pulled it off, but at
  the same time I'm not sure whether making it two days would not have
  allowed more cozy socializing, and perhaps more selectiveness on talks.
  I don't know: it's worth thinking about, even if it'll be kinda hard
  to shorten the conf now that we've set a new standard.

* It was wonderful to have people from abroad. I know how difficult
  funding is, both for organizations (e.g., TPF) and for individuals;
  of course, the more successful we are every year, the easier it will
  be to attract more international attendees the next one. I think we
  did well in that regard, and we need to keep the ball rolling!

A note about these notes: it's impossible for one person to do all this
work himself. If you enjoyed this year's conference, please consider
helping out organizing the next one!

[Roie]
> It would be great if someone (who is more qualified than myself) could come up 
> with a few pointers on what technical issues to avoid when making a 
> presentation. I'm thinking of stuff like "don't use dark blue on a black 
> background", or "make sure all your windows including terminal emulators use 
> a large font", and I'm sure there are a few others that people can pitch in. 
> I suggest that this list be mailed to everyone whose presentation is accepted 
> - if it's just a link from the main site, people might miss it.

Let's put this on a Wiki somewhere. For starters:

* Secure a laptop on which you'll be doing your presentation. Make sure
  it looks like you want it to at 1024x768, which is what most projectors
  can display. (Better: find out for sure. Some only do 800x600.) Colors
  will be a little bit off, so either don't care about colors too much
  or calibrate in the classroom much like musicians perform balance
  before a gig.

* Have a plan for what to do if your laptop dies the night before your
  talk. (I don't mean "Panic". I mean something like, "I'll need to: 1.
  borrow a laptop running linux; 2. wget slides from $URL; 3. install
  frobtz version 4.117. Yes, this is a lot like deploying software
  at a client site.) If you are precisely the opposite of me and have
  everything prepared well in advance, consider burning a livecd with
  your talk. Make a spare.

* Dark on light, high contrast == visible. Light on dark background ==
  audience in the dark, sleeping.

* Large fonts.

* Minimize typing. Unless you are Audrey you type slower than your
  audience thinks.

* Think about presentation styles you've seen in real life. Optimize for
  delivery to your live audience, not future readers online. (Personal
  example: I thought Takahashi style was too videoclippy and
  populistic. Now that I've seen it in action I'm considering learning
  to use it myself.)

* "What are you saying to help me with the problem you assume me to have?"

-- 
Gaal Yahas <gaal at forum2.org>
http://gaal.livejournal.com/