Re: [guadec-list] GUADEC 2016: length and schedule

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
...
> I've been to conferences before where speakers could request either a
> short or a long time slot. For example, 20 minutes would be just fine
> for me to give an update on Mallard happenings. Lightning talks are
> fun, and I love giving them, but I can't fit everything in 5 minutes.
> But 45 minutes for that would drag.

That's a good idea. 20 minutes is about right for an "update" style talk.

LGM uses short talks in a single track. One thing I like about the
format is that it brings everyone together - you have everyone in one
room, getting a good overview of what's been happening in the
community (due to the relatively large number of speakers). They also
do it without breaks, assuming that people will dip in and out. (One
obvious disadvantage of this approach - it is quite hard to stick to
schedule.)

You could do it so that the short presentations are a single track,
and then the longer talks are multi-tracked.

I've added a sketch to the etherpad [1] - you could have 12 longer
talks and either 8 or 16 short ones, depending on whether you go
multi-track for those or not.

Allan

[1] https://etherpad.gnome.org/p/schedule_sketches