Re: PGCon 2008 RFP

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> wrote:
>
> On Dec 29, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> Some presenters are better than others.  And they get their slides
> up on time too.

I'm not sure I see any difficulty here.  It's like we're trying to
re-invent the wheel.

I've spoken at several large database conferences (which run extremely
smoothly), and their rules of presenting are as follows:

- You submit an abstract by the deadline
- If your abstract is accepted, you must acknowledge that you will do
the following:
  - Submit a completed presentation to the organizers X days before
the conference (generally 1 month).
  - Submit a completed 6-10 page detailed white paper about your topic
to the organizers Y days before the conference (generally X/2).

Failure to submit required presentation materials by their deadline,
or submitting presentation materials not relevant to your given slot
results in your slot immediately being given to an alternate.  No
questions asked.

Most of the conferences will not post the presentation/white paper you
gave them until a week or so after the conference, which gives you
time to update them (if you want) prior to them being made public.

Also, as I haven't chimed in on the other subject of standardized
slide templates, I'm in favor of standardization as well.  Not to be
rude, but some PG slides are ugly and hard to read.  Having a set of
consistent templates makes the slide author focus on the content
rather than design, and it removes the all-too-common bad fonts, bad
colors, and bad backgrounds.  Just my 2 cents.

--
Jonah H. Harris, Senior DBA
myYearbook.com