Re: PGCon 2008 RFP

Selena Deckelmann wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 7:33 AM, Robert Bernier
> <robert.bernier5@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > Dan,
> >
> > What do you think about the idea of standardizing all presentation slides
> > and documentation? OSCON has been doing it for years. It would make for
> > excellent contribution to postgresql.org documentation.
>
> Standard templates aren't useful for presenters, and in many cases
> encourage bad presentation behavior. I, as you might guess by that
> intro, am not in favor of it.
>
> Providing standard graphics that people can stamp on their slides,
> however, to "brand" the slides as being from PgCon would be helpful
> for the marketing of the conference.
>
> Looking generally for a lasting documentation contribution -- It would
> be nice to encourage attendees to take what they learn from
> presentations and write/blog about them immediately and link back to
> the individual session pages.
>
> If there's a way to get coverage of most of the talks, I'd like to
> figure out how we can make that happen. First step might be having all
> members of the committee commit to one blog post during the
> conference. And I'm not trying to pile work on everyone - just saying
> that effort in any direction is more likely to pay off in the
> blog-o-sphere than in template creation.

I agree that there is great value to summarizing outstanding talks given
at conferences, and I have done that many times in the past.  The
biggest hurtle for me was getting the presentation slides online while
the conference was going on or within days after it.  I have had to
pressure presenters by asking them hourly to put their slides online,
and once they do I can quickly blog about their talk.

Event organizers _say_ the slides will be online, but that is often
weeks/months after the conference, if at all, and they often can't
_force_ presenters to submit their slides.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +