Обсуждение: PGCon 2008 RFP

Hello folks,

PGCon 2008 will be held 21-22 May 2009, in Ottawa at the University of
Ottawa.  It will be preceded by two days of tutorials on 19-20 May 2008.

We are now accepting proposals for talks.

If you are doing something interesting with PostgreSQL, please submit
a proposal.  You might be one of the backend hackers or work on a
PostgreSQL related project and want to share your know-how with
others. You might be developing an interesting system using PostgreSQL
as the foundation. Perhaps you migrated from another database to
PostgreSQL and would like to share details.  These, and other stories
are welcome. Both users and developers are encouraged to share their
experiences.

Here are a some ideas to jump start your proposal process:

- novel, unique or complex ways in which PostgreSQL are used
- migration of production systems to PostgreSQL
- data warehousing with PostgreSQL
- tuning PostgreSQL for different work loads
- replicating data on top of PostgreSQL
- hacking the PostgreSQL code
- PostgreSQL derivatives and forks
- applications built around PostgreSQL
- tuning PostgreSQL for different work loads
- tuning and benchmarking
- case studies and howtos
- location-aware software with PostGIS
- emerging features
- research and teaching with PostgreSQL
- things the PostgreSQL project could do better

Both users and developers are encouraged to share their experiences.

The schedule is:

19 Dec 2008 Proposal acceptance begins
19 Jan 2009 Proposal acceptance ends
19 Feb 2009 Confirmation of accepted proposals

See also <http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php>

Instructions for submitting a proposal to PGCon 2009 are available
from: <http://www.pgcon.org/2009/submissions.php>

--
Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference: http://www.bsdcan.org/
PGCon  - The PostgreSQL Conference:    http://www.pgcon.org/

On Dec 20, 2008, at 1:13 PM, Dan Langille wrote:

> Hello folks,
>
> PGCon 2008 will be held 21-22 May 2009, in Ottawa at the University of
> Ottawa.  It will be preceded by two days of tutorials on 19-20 May
> 2008.

Despite proof reading by several eyes, the 2008 references in the
above paragraph and in the subject should be 2009.

I have a job for a proof reader.  Apply off list.  :)
>
>
> We are now accepting proposals for talks.
>
> If you are doing something interesting with PostgreSQL, please
> submit a proposal.  You might be one of the backend hackers or work
> on a PostgreSQL related project and want to share your know-how with
> others. You might be developing an interesting system using
> PostgreSQL as the foundation. Perhaps you migrated from another
> database to PostgreSQL and would like to share details.  These, and
> other stories are welcome. Both users and developers are encouraged
> to share their experiences.
>
> Here are a some ideas to jump start your proposal process:
>
> - novel, unique or complex ways in which PostgreSQL are used
> - migration of production systems to PostgreSQL
> - data warehousing with PostgreSQL
> - tuning PostgreSQL for different work loads
> - replicating data on top of PostgreSQL
> - hacking the PostgreSQL code
> - PostgreSQL derivatives and forks
> - applications built around PostgreSQL
> - tuning PostgreSQL for different work loads
> - tuning and benchmarking
> - case studies and howtos
> - location-aware software with PostGIS
> - emerging features
> - research and teaching with PostgreSQL
> - things the PostgreSQL project could do better
>
> Both users and developers are encouraged to share their experiences.
>
> The schedule is:
>
> 19 Dec 2008 Proposal acceptance begins
> 19 Jan 2009 Proposal acceptance ends
> 19 Feb 2009 Confirmation of accepted proposals
>
> See also <http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php>
>
> Instructions for submitting a proposal to PGCon 2009 are available
> from: <http://www.pgcon.org/2009/submissions.php>
>
> --
> Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/
> BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference: http://www.bsdcan.org/
> PGCon  - The PostgreSQL Conference:    http://www.pgcon.org/
>
> --
> Sent via pgsql-advocacy mailing list (pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-advocacy

--
Dan Langille
http://langille.org/

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.

Robert

On Saturday 20 December 2008 10:13:39 Dan Langille wrote:

> Hello folks,

>

> PGCon 2008 will be held 21-22 May 2009, in Ottawa at the University of

> Ottawa. It will be preceded by two days of tutorials on 19-20 May 2008.

>

> We are now accepting proposals for talks.

>

> If you are doing something interesting with PostgreSQL, please submit

> a proposal. You might be one of the backend hackers or work on a

> PostgreSQL related project and want to share your know-how with

> others. You might be developing an interesting system using PostgreSQL

> as the foundation. Perhaps you migrated from another database to

> PostgreSQL and would like to share details. These, and other stories

> are welcome. Both users and developers are encouraged to share their

> experiences.

>

> Here are a some ideas to jump start your proposal process:

>

> - novel, unique or complex ways in which PostgreSQL are used

> - migration of production systems to PostgreSQL

> - data warehousing with PostgreSQL

> - tuning PostgreSQL for different work loads

> - replicating data on top of PostgreSQL

> - hacking the PostgreSQL code

> - PostgreSQL derivatives and forks

> - applications built around PostgreSQL

> - tuning PostgreSQL for different work loads

> - tuning and benchmarking

> - case studies and howtos

> - location-aware software with PostGIS

> - emerging features

> - research and teaching with PostgreSQL

> - things the PostgreSQL project could do better

>

> Both users and developers are encouraged to share their experiences.

>

> The schedule is:

>

> 19 Dec 2008 Proposal acceptance begins

> 19 Jan 2009 Proposal acceptance ends

> 19 Feb 2009 Confirmation of accepted proposals

>

> See also <http://www.pgcon.org/2009/papers.php>

>

> Instructions for submitting a proposal to PGCon 2009 are available

> from: <http://www.pgcon.org/2009/submissions.php>

>

> --

> Dan Langille - http://www.langille.org/

> BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference: http://www.bsdcan.org/

> PGCon - The PostgreSQL Conference: http://www.pgcon.org/

On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 07:33:22AM -0800, Robert Bernier wrote:
> Dan,
>
> What do you think about the idea of standardizing all presentation
> slides and documentation?

How is that different from what's been going on already?

> OSCON has been doing it for years.  It would make for excellent
> contribution to postgresql.org documentation.

One issue to bear in mind is that hacks around limitations in
PostgreSQL become useless or worse as PostgreSQL improves, which means
that somebody needs to go through and mark them as such.  Any
volunteers for this?

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

Robert,

> What do you think about the idea of standardizing all presentation
> slides and documentation?

What do you mean "standardizing"?

If you mean requiring everyone to use the same slide template, I'm very
opposed to it.

--Josh

On Saturday 27 December 2008 19:15:02 Josh Berkus wrote:

> > What do you think about the idea of standardizing all presentation

> > slides and documentation?

>

> If you mean requiring everyone to use the same slide template, I'm very

> opposed to it.

Since the advantages are self-evident, can you explain to me the advantages of "not" standardizing?

Robert

On Dec 28, 2008, at 11:08 AM, Robert Bernier wrote:

> On Saturday 27 December 2008 19:15:02 Josh Berkus wrote:
> > > What do you think about the idea of standardizing all presentation
> > > slides and documentation?
> >
> > If you mean requiring everyone to use the same slide template, I'm
> very
> > opposed to it.
> Since the advantages are self-evident, can you explain to me the
> advantages of "not" standardizing?

- having to create the standard (time)
- ensuring the standard works with all the options people want to use
for creating slides
- what happens if you present with non-standard slides

It's asking PGCon to do more work.  It means the presenters have to do
more work.

I'm not sure of the benefits.  And it takes time away from the core
conference operations.

--
Dan Langille
http://langille.org/

On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 08:08:19AM -0800, Robert Bernier wrote:
> On Saturday 27 December 2008 19:15:02 Josh Berkus wrote:
> > > What do you think about the idea of standardizing all
> > > presentation slides and documentation?
> >
> > If you mean requiring everyone to use the same slide template, I'm
> > very opposed to it.
>
> Since the advantages are self-evident, can you explain to me the
> advantages of "not" standardizing?

With all due respect, you've got this completely backwards.  As the
person proposing a change, the burden of proof is on you to show
first, that it's beneficial, and second, that it's beneficial *enough*
to do the work of changing.

Apart from, "some entity somewhere else has done unspecified work for
their purposes, which may or may not have anything to do with this,"
you haven't even started making your case for the first part.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

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.

-selena

--
Selena Deckelmann
Open Source Bridge - http://www.opensourcebridge.org
PDXPUG - http://pugs.postgresql.org/pdx
Me - http://www.chesnok.com/daily

Here is a snippet of my original post:

> .... It would make for

> excellent contribution to postgresql.org documentation.

Standardized documentation means it has a life after the conference and will benefit far more people in a much wider context.

Robert

On Dec 28, 2008, at 7:30 PM, Robert Bernier wrote:

> Here is a snippet of my original post:
> > .... It would make for
> > excellent contribution to postgresql.org documentation.
> Standardized documentation means it has a life after the conference
> and will benefit far more people in a much wider context.


How is it that slides from the conference become documentation?

 From what I've seen, documentation is quite different from slides.

--
Dan Langille
http://langille.org/

On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 04:30:59PM -0800, Robert Bernier wrote:

> Standardized documentation means it has a life after the conference and will
> benefit far more people in a much wider context.

A standardized format for presentation materials just ensures that all
presentations end up conveying the same overall message, and differ
exclusively in the details.  I encourage those who doubt that claim to
read "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint", which you can order from
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp.  Indeed, I have been
through a number of lamentable presentations, both at Pg conferences
and elsewhere, that would have gained tremendously from less
conventional approaches to presenting material.  (I'm sure there are
many who feel the same way after having heard me speak.)

There's another issue: many corporations require those presenting
under sponsorship of the corporation to use _company_ slide formats.
These are just as bad as conference-imposed formats, but they have the
notable advantage that they ensure the presenters have funding
actually to get to the conference.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs@crankycanuck.ca

David Fetter wrote:
> Apart from, "some entity somewhere else has done unspecified work for
> their purposes, which may or may not have anything to do with this,"
> you haven't even started making your case for the first part.

And how exactly would a template work?  I use LyX/LaTeX to create all my
presentations as PDFs.  How do I include a template in that case?  Are
you assuming everyone uses Powerpoint or Open Office?

I have to say I have never used a conference or company-supplied
template in any of my presentations, and I don't think anyone has asked
either.

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

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

On Dec 29, 2008, at 3:25 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> David Fetter wrote:
>> Apart from, "some entity somewhere else has done unspecified work for
>> their purposes, which may or may not have anything to do with this,"
>> you haven't even started making your case for the first part.
>
> And how exactly would a template work?  I use LyX/LaTeX to create
> all my
> presentations as PDFs.  How do I include a template in that case?  Are
> you assuming everyone uses Powerpoint or Open Office?
>
> I have to say I have never used a conference or company-supplied
> template in any of my presentations, and I don't think anyone has
> asked
> either.

Bruce!  Excellent.

For you, this year only, I will ask.  You.  Only.

;)

--
Dan Langille
http://langille.org/

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. +

On Mon, 2008-12-29 at 15:25 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> David Fetter wrote:
> > Apart from, "some entity somewhere else has done unspecified work for
> > their purposes, which may or may not have anything to do with this,"
> > you haven't even started making your case for the first part.
>
> And how exactly would a template work?  I use LyX/LaTeX to create all my
> presentations as PDFs.  How do I include a template in that case?  Are
> you assuming everyone uses Powerpoint or Open Office?
>
> I have to say I have never used a conference or company-supplied
> template in any of my presentations, and I don't think anyone has asked
> either.

Well I think you did for West :P but, that isn't the point. I think the
real deal here is... everyone presents in their own way. At Pg
Conference we have had lyx/latex, plain text, html, pdf, powerpoint
etc... I don't think it is realistic to make people change that.

Joshua D. Drake

--
PostgreSQL
   Consulting, Development, Support, Training
   503-667-4564 - http://www.commandprompt.com/
   The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997

Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 04:30:59PM -0800, Robert Bernier wrote:
>
> > Standardized documentation means it has a life after the conference and will
> > benefit far more people in a much wider context.
>
> A standardized format for presentation materials just ensures that all
> presentations end up conveying the same overall message, and differ
> exclusively in the details.  I encourage those who doubt that claim to
> read "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint", which you can order from
> http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp.  Indeed, I have been
> through a number of lamentable presentations, both at Pg conferences
> and elsewhere, that would have gained tremendously from less
> conventional approaches to presenting material.  (I'm sure there are
> many who feel the same way after having heard me speak.)

How does a template make the overall messages similar?

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

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

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.

<fairy tale>
If we have enough volunteers:  speakers will be accosted in the
lecture hall just before their talk.  The attacker will have a USB drive
and will not let the presenter speak until they supply a copy of the
slides.
</fairy tale>

Said attacker will then upload the slides during the talk.

Insert applause here.

Idea blatantly stolen from stories I've been told.

--
Dan Langille
http://langille.org/

Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-12-29 at 15:25 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > David Fetter wrote:
> > > Apart from, "some entity somewhere else has done unspecified work for
> > > their purposes, which may or may not have anything to do with this,"
> > > you haven't even started making your case for the first part.
> >
> > And how exactly would a template work?  I use LyX/LaTeX to create all my
> > presentations as PDFs.  How do I include a template in that case?  Are
> > you assuming everyone uses Powerpoint or Open Office?
> >
> > I have to say I have never used a conference or company-supplied
> > template in any of my presentations, and I don't think anyone has asked
> > either.
>
> Well I think you did for West :P but, that isn't the point. I think the
> real deal here is... everyone presents in their own way. At Pg
> Conference we have had lyx/latex, plain text, html, pdf, powerpoint
> etc... I don't think it is realistic to make people change that.

Oh, I forgot --- I talked at a company event and the company converted
my slides to Powerpoint so it would have the same template as everyone
else.  The problem was that the Powerpoint lost some of the quality of
the graphics so I am unclear if it was worth the conversion.

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

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

On Mon, 2008-12-29 at 15:35 -0500, Dan Langille wrote:
> On Dec 29, 2008, at 3:31 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> Some presenters are better than others.  And they get their slides
> up on time too.
>
> <fairy tale>
> If we have enough volunteers:  speakers will be accosted in the
> lecture hall just before their talk.  The attacker will have a USB drive
> and will not let the presenter speak until they supply a copy of the
> slides.
> </fairy tale>
>
> Said attacker will then upload the slides during the talk.
>
> Insert applause here.
>
> Idea blatantly stolen from stories I've been told.

That is exactly what happen to me at MySQLCon.

Joshua D. Drake


>
> --
> Dan Langille
> http://langille.org/
>
>
>
>
--
PostgreSQL
   Consulting, Development, Support, Training
   503-667-4564 - http://www.commandprompt.com/
   The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 8:35 PM, Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> wrote:
>
> <fairy tale>
> If we have enough volunteers:  speakers will be accosted in the
> lecture hall just before their talk.  The attacker will have a USB drive
> and will not let the presenter speak until they supply a copy of the slides.
> </fairy tale>

For the lightning talks at PG EU, I badgered everyone into supplying
their slides a few days before the event. My motive in that instance
was to ensure that they all worked and were ready to run on a single
machine, but it worked.

We also managed to get all the slides in advance or on the day for PG
UK - they were on the wiki the following morning. I forget what type
of carrot/whip we used that time.

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK:   http://www.enterprisedb.com

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 03:32:39PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> > exclusively in the details.  I encourage those who doubt that claim to
> > read "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint", which you can order from
> > http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp.  Indeed, I have been

> How does a template make the overall messages similar?

You'll have to read Tufte's argument yourself to gather whether I'm
doing him justice ;-)  But his point in general is that the format of
presentation of something shapes the content.  In the case of slide
templates, for instance, it forces you to structure what you put on a
slide in the way that best fits the _slide_, rather than how it best
fits the _message_.  If everyone starts using the same slide
templates, then everyone starts to tailor their messages to those
slide formats.  Since the template is shaping the message, the result
is that every message ends up shaped the same.

The most dramatic example I ever personally saw of this was watching
two people argue diametrically opposed positions on a topic.  For the
"sake of expediency", the chair of the session convinced them to use
the same slide deck and take turns talking at each slide.  More than
half the people I heard discussing it after thought the two people
were saying _the same thing_, because the only thing they could put on
the slides were bits of data that could be used in favour of either
position.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs@crankycanuck.ca

Dave Page escreveu:
> We also managed to get all the slides in advance or on the day for PG
> UK - they were on the wiki the following morning. I forget what type
> of carrot/whip we used that time.
>
We did the same at PGCon Brazil. But our motivation was to concatenate all
lightining talks with some standard slides between them. So speakers didn't
need to worry about setting up their laptops and we didn't waste time. We
asked all speakers to send their presentations in pdf format; so AFAIR we used
ghostscript to put all of them together.


--
  Euler Taveira de Oliveira
  http://www.timbira.com/

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Euler Taveira de Oliveira
<euler@timbira.com> wrote:
> Dave Page escreveu:
>> We also managed to get all the slides in advance or on the day for PG
>> UK - they were on the wiki the following morning. I forget what type
>> of carrot/whip we used that time.
>>
> We did the same at PGCon Brazil. But our motivation was to concatenate all
> lightining talks with some standard slides between them. So speakers didn't
> need to worry about setting up their laptops and we didn't waste time. We
> asked all speakers to send their presentations in pdf format; so AFAIR we used
> ghostscript to put all of them together.

We didn't go quite that far or PG EU - some of the decks were quite
complex Power Points, and one even included the talk itself as the
presenter couldn't attend in person. I simply wanted to make sure we
had everything ready to roll on one machine.

The PG UK ones were full length talks - the motivation there was
purely to get them on the wiki.

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK:   http://www.enterprisedb.com

On Dec 29, 2008, at 3:47 PM, Dave Page wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 8:35 PM, Dan Langille <dan@langille.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> <fairy tale>
>> If we have enough volunteers:  speakers will be accosted in the
>> lecture hall just before their talk.  The attacker will have a USB
>> drive
>> and will not let the presenter speak until they supply a copy of
>> the slides.
>> </fairy tale>
>
> For the lightning talks at PG EU, I badgered everyone into supplying
> their slides a few days before the event. My motive in that instance
> was to ensure that they all worked and were ready to run on a single
> machine, but it worked.

Ladies and Gentleman!  I think we have found our volunteer!  ;)

--
Dan Langille
http://langille.org/

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 9:42 PM, Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> wrote:
>
>> For the lightning talks at PG EU, I badgered everyone into supplying
>> their slides a few days before the event. My motive in that instance
>> was to ensure that they all worked and were ready to run on a single
>> machine, but it worked.
>
> Ladies and Gentleman!  I think we have found our volunteer!  ;)

<fingers in ears>LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA</fingers in ears>


--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK:   http://www.enterprisedb.com

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008, Dan Langille wrote:

> If we have enough volunteers:  speakers will be accosted in the lecture
> hall just before their talk.  The attacker will have a USB drive and
> will not let the presenter speak until they supply a copy of the slides.

I think some speakers might be uncomfortable with their slides going out
to the world at large before they've even presented them.  People pay more
attention to the talk if they haven't seen the slides beforehand, and
there's plenty of amusing speakers you wouldn't want to ruin the live
presentation of that way.  Being accosted by random people can be
disconcerting as well.

What might make sense is to have an official list of organizer deputies
authorized to collect a copy of the slides as part of the setup/teardown
of each talk.  If the presenter knew that giving a copy to someone on that
list relieved them of needing to submit them later (and made for easy
deflection of individual requests), and that the slides would be posted
promptly just after the presentation itself (but not before), I think that
could play out well on both sides.

I would volunteer to fill that role for any talk I attend.  Unless you do
something crazy that would ruin my chances of coming at all, like
requiring standardized slides without providing a LaTeX template.
(Robert mentioned OSCON:  they provide templates in
PowerPoint/Keynote/HTML format to aid presenters, but they do not require
their use)

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD

On Dec 29, 2008, at 8:40 PM, Greg Smith wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Dec 2008, Dan Langille wrote:
>
>> If we have enough volunteers:  speakers will be accosted in the
>> lecture hall just before their talk.  The attacker will have a USB
>> drive and will not let the presenter speak until they supply a copy
>> of the slides.
>
> I think some speakers might be uncomfortable with their slides going
> out to the world at large before they've even presented them.
> People pay more attention to the talk if they haven't seen the
> slides beforehand, and there's plenty of amusing speakers you
> wouldn't want to ruin the live presentation of that way.  Being
> accosted by random people can be disconcerting as well.

Greg: The speakers will know in advance that request will be
forthcoming.  In addition, uploading to the website != public.  Papers
get uploaded to http://papers.pgcon.org/ and then are published to http://pgcon.org/
  at some later point in time.  It's all part of Pentabarf (http://pentabarf.org
).

> What might make sense is to have an official list of organizer
> deputies authorized to collect a copy of the slides as part of the
> setup/teardown of each talk.  If the presenter knew that giving a
> copy to someone on that list relieved them of needing to submit them
> later (and made for easy deflection of individual requests), and
> that the slides would be posted promptly just after the presentation
> itself (but not before), I think that could play out well on both
> sides.

They probably won't be available until after the conference.  As for a
list, the speaker will have no way of verifying that a given person is
on that list without presenting ID.   Let's keep it simple. These
aren't state secrets.

> I would volunteer to fill that role for any talk I attend.  Unless
> you do something crazy that would ruin my chances of coming at all,
> like requiring standardized slides without providing a LaTeX
> template. (Robert mentioned OSCON:  they provide templates in
> PowerPoint/Keynote/HTML format to aid presenters, but they do not
> require their use)


Thank you for volunteering.  Please subscribe to the PGCon Volunteers
list: http://lists.pgcon.org/mailman/listinfo/pgcon-volunteers

--
Dan Langille
http://langille.org/

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

On Tue, 2008-12-30 at 15:26 -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> wrote:

> 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.
>

I don't know of any conference that enforces that level of formatting on
the speakers.

Joshua D. Drake



> --
> Jonah H. Harris, Senior DBA
> myYearbook.com
>
--
PostgreSQL
   Consulting, Development, Support, Training
   503-667-4564 - http://www.commandprompt.com/
   The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 3:31 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-12-30 at 15:26 -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Dan Langille <dan@langille.org> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> I don't know of any conference that enforces that level of formatting on
> the speakers.

Well, how many DB2 or Oracle conferences have you attended?  The
industry conferences (even those given by the user groups) are
different than open source conferences, that's for sure.  Of course,
you're paying a helluva lot more to attend any of those than you are
PGCon... so maybe they just have higher expectations?

Also, I forgot to mention that they do permit you to put your company
logo on the intro slide or the "about me" slide.  They just don't want
people pushing products rather than information.  The point of a
conference is for you to present relevant material, not propoganda.

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

"Jonah H. Harris" <jonah.harris@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 3:31 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't know of any conference that enforces that level of formatting on
>> the speakers.
>
> Well, how many DB2 or Oracle conferences have you attended?

Are they 10x faster than Postgres conferences?

--
greg

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 5:24 PM, Gregory Stark <stark@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
> Are they 10x faster than Postgres conferences?

Heh, no.  That's one performance metric Postgres has them beat at :)
Unless of course, you could find enough good PG content to fill a few
hundred sessions a day for an entire week.

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

Jonah,

> Well, how many DB2 or Oracle conferences have you attended?  The
> industry conferences (even those given by the user groups) are
> different than open source conferences, that's for sure.  Of course,
> you're paying a helluva lot more to attend any of those than you are
> PGCon... so maybe they just have higher expectations?

Or more much lower ones, because they know people are being paid to attend.

I attended a number of industry conferencences for Sun (Sun, Oracle,
IBM, various Java companies).  And I can tell you, I would *never* in a
million years have paid to sit in one single presentation I attended.
Even when the subject matter was personally interesting to me, the
presentation style was like waiting for pitch to drip.  And, looking
around, 90% of the attendees were doing their e-mail and never even
looked at the speaker.

Standardized slide templates contributed significantly to the boredom.
"What presentation am I in again?  Is this Scaling J2EE Servers, or Web
Security?   Haven't I seen this slide before?"

I successfully fought the JavaOne committee last year *not* to use the
JavaOne template because it interfered with my delivery.  The result?
My presentation was voted #2 or #3 in the conference overall (out of >
200), even though it had no real Java content.

OSCON, the hardest-to-get-into OSS conference in the English speaking
world, offers "OSCON" slide templates.  But we don't force or even
harass people to use them; we prefer speakers with their own distinctive
  style.

It's my assertion that people who promote the use of standard slide
templates do so because they don't know how to put together a good
presentation themselves.  Heck, some really good presentations use *no
slides at all*.

--Josh Berkus

On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 13:47 -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:

> ich is what most people are there for... content.
>
> I don't really care about this topic one way or another, just that
> most arguments against standardization seem to be preference-related
> and without much logic.  While the choice lies in the hands of the
> PGCon organizers, it probably wouldn't hurt for JD to put up another
> poll like he did for PG East planning.
>
Well since I got brought into this :P. East will *not* require
standardized templates. If Dan wishes to with PgCon that is up to him
(but it doesn't strike as something he would want to do).

Jonah, one of the great things about open source is that we all get to
represent our own point of view. We don't get sucked into the great
dairy farm of Oracle or Sun representation. Each person is able to stand
on their own merits.

If you need a standardized template to get your message across in a
useful way then you are likely not someone who should be doing public
speaking in the first place.

Now... how is any of this on topic for this list?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


>
--
PostgreSQL
   Consulting, Development, Support, Training
   503-667-4564 - http://www.commandprompt.com/
   The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997

On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 14:02 -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
> wrote:

>
> For the most part, I agree.  But for new presenters, it never hurts to
> point them in the right direction.

Ahh but that is a different argument than I have read on this list. I
don't see any problem with providing templates to help people. It is
"requiring" them that gets my feathers ruffled.

>
>         Now... how is any of this on topic for this list?
>
> I didn't start the topic, and it's on -advocacy which is seemingly
> where conferences would apply.

Well its as close as any list would be within .org but I believe that if
anyone wants to change the way individual conference are run they should
contact the respective organizers.

Joshua D. Drake

>
--
PostgreSQL
   Consulting, Development, Support, Training
   503-667-4564 - http://www.commandprompt.com/
   The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997

On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 01:47:00PM -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:21 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>
> > Standardized slide templates contributed significantly to the boredom.
> > "What presentation am I in again?  Is this Scaling J2EE Servers, or Web
> > Security?   Haven't I seen this slide before?"
>
> IMO, that's completely bogus.  If you don't know what presentation
> you're in, or why you attended it, that's a whole other problem
> altogether.

It's a problem much exacerbated by a cookie-cutter approach to slide
decks.

> No one puts the title of their session on every slide, so the basis
> of your argument, that the slides themselves help you determine
> which presentation you're in, seems bogus to me.

It doesn't seem bogus to me, and I clocked about 200,000 miles last
year doing presentations, the vast majority of which were quite
popular.

> > I successfully fought the JavaOne committee last year *not* to use
> > the JavaOne template because it interfered with my delivery.  The
> > result? My presentation was voted #2 or #3 in the conference
> > overall (out of > 200), even though it had no real Java content.
>
> Hmm, seems like too many variables there to me.  Am I correct in
> saying that you attribute your success solely to your slide deck and
> not your delivery, questions answered, etc.?

No, but a forced slide format would significantly detract from my
ability to make the slides helpful.

> > OSCON, the hardest-to-get-into OSS conference in the English
> > speaking world, offers "OSCON" slide templates.  But we don't
> > force or even harass people to use them; we prefer speakers with
> > their own distinctive  style.
>
> Have you seen some of the PG presentations?  I recall two or three
> at PGCon last year which were difficult to read due to colors and/or
> too much text on a single slide.  If you were at the back of the
> room, you were screwed.

It's up to you to give feedback both directly to the speakers and to
the conference organizers.  Cookie-cutter slide decks solve none of
this.

> Now, could someone jam way too much text into a standardized slide?
> Sure.

Making slide decks is an art with not fewer wrinkles in it than
writing good C code.

> But, it's going to be a bit more obvious that you're doing something
> wrong when your slides stop looking like the templates (such as 15
> bullets at a font size of 8pt instead of 5 or so at a font size of
> 14pt).

If you think the cookie-cutter approach will help fix a problem like
this, you have a *lot* of evidence to present in order to make your
case.  Frankly, you don't have that evidence, and those of us who've
dealt with the cookie-cutter approach have plenty.

> > It's my assertion that people who promote the use of standard
> > slide templates do so because they don't know how to put together
> > a good presentation themselves.  Heck, some really good
> > presentations use *no slides at all*.
>
> That assertion is blatantly false because it's not the presenters
> who promote the use of templates, it's the conference organizers.

Conference organizers can't be expected to have a clue about making
slide decks, and fortunately for all concerned, they aren't usually
asked to have an opinion on the matter.  When a plumber gets asked
about on oil painting, you can only accidentally (or in rare cases of
plumber/painters) get a reasonable answer.

> It all comes down to the experience of the presenter and whether or
> not they know how to give a good presentation.  Standardized slides
> are there to promote the conference itself (as all future references
> to conference material have the conference name all over it) and to
> help presenters focus more on the content than on designing their
> slides, which is what most people are there for... content.

You're just completely mistaken on this one.  Presenters need a very
free hand about their slides, including the decision about whether
slides are an appropriate medium for their talk.  Some of the best
talks I've seen so far have included no slides at all.

> I don't really care about this topic one way or another,

You could have fooled me.

> just that most arguments against standardization seem to be
> preference-related and without much logic.

If you imagine that logic by itself makes for good presentations, I
guarantee that your presentations will suck.

> While the choice lies in the hands of the PGCon organizers, it
> probably wouldn't hurt for JD to put up another poll like he did for
> PG East planning.

Actually, it would.  Those of us that have some experience on this
matter think it's a rotten idea.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

FYI, this thread was started up in the first place was to address the issue of supplementing the existing references by suggesting the resuse of talks in a form that could benefit the community as a whole beyond the confines of the conference hall.

So?

Robert

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Jonah H. Harris <jonah.harris@gmail.com> wrote:

>  I don't really care what the slides look like, I'm focused on the content of
> the presentation.

A perfect end to this thread! ;)

-selena

--
Selena Deckelmann
Open Source Bridge - http://www.opensourcebridge.org
PDXPUG - http://pugs.postgresql.org/pdx
Me - http://www.chesnok.com/daily

On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 02:29:53PM -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 2:21 PM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote:
>
> > > No one puts the title of their session on every slide, so the
> > > basis of your argument, that the slides themselves help you
> > > determine which presentation you're in, seems bogus to me.
> >
> > It doesn't seem bogus to me, and I clocked about 200,000 miles
> > last year doing presentations, the vast majority of which were
> > quite popular.
>
> That sounds like shameless self-promotion.  How is your statement
> relevant to anything mentioned?

It establishes my credentials when I state an opinion on
presentations.

> > > While the choice lies in the hands of the PGCon organizers, it
> > > probably wouldn't hurt for JD to put up another poll like he did
> > > for PG East planning.
> >
> > Actually, it would.  Those of us that have some experience on this
> > matter think it's a rotten idea.
>
> Then you could vote... just like everyone else :)

You're acting as though this were some kind of vaguely good idea where
an up-or-down vote on it is a small matter.  It's not.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

On Monday 05 January 2009 11:30:39 Jonah H. Harris wrote:

> So, it's all your fault! :)

You have no idea how often I hear that refrain ;-)

Robert

Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> > The most compelling reason I've heard for non-standard templates is the
> > wide variety of presentation tools (or lack of presentation tools)that
> > people use.
> >
>
> Yeah... not to sure how we'd help Bruce with his LaTeX slides :)

Even if I used slide templates and Open office, would I have to retool
my slides every time I give an existing presentation at a new
conference?

    http://momjian.us/main/presentations.html

That seems like a pain.

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

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

gmr@myyearbook.com ("Gavin M. Roy") writes:
>  Personally, the only argument I see for standardization is it makes
>  the conference feel more professional.  Having been to a fair
>  amount of conferences, I'm more impressed by the ones that put an
>  emphasis on the polish of the event, matching collateral materials
>  (logos, signage, > etc).  Obviously content is king, but second to
>  content is how the content is conveyed, the design image of a
>  conference.

I'll suggest different "prime value" to this sort of
standardization...

Standardizing formats means that you *might* more readily be able to
produce a single, somewhat-uniform-looking, document combining all the
material together.

Conference proceedings are the more typical example of attempts to
"standardize format;" having common format means that they can publish
*THAT* as a "book" and not have it look like a dog's breakfast.

The PostgreSQL-related conferences aren't formal enough for that sort
of imposition to seem at all reasonable.  We're generally not in the
sort of academic "publish-or-perish" peril that would force the
presenters to go to that particular sort of effort.

I would suggest that, for our purposes, there is a value in NOT
attempting standardization, namely that we haven't anything resembling
the degree of infrastructure required to support production of a
sufficiently "all-encompassing" standardized format.

We don't (yet ;-)) have in-place upgrades beteween versions; I'd
*much* rather that "systematizing efforts" went into that.

If we had someone around that was a graphic arts "guru" who wanted to
put together some nice looking PowerPoint/Keynote/OOImpress templates,
I don't imagine anyone would say "Don't do it!"  But I don't think
it's worth looking *hard* for that, or in trying to impose burdens
surrounding this on presenters.

I don't believe that a lack of "collateral matching" is our largest
problem :-).
--
output = ("cbbrowne" "@" "acm.org")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/
Chaotic Evil means never having to say you're sorry.