[Air-L] i have to share.... [aka: why we need to introduce fun talks to our conferences]

[Cornelius Puschmann]

We decided a use a (somewhat) similar format ("lightning talks") at a
conference on e-science last year because of the large number of
submissions. A lot of interesting contributions were about newly launched
projects, so we felt like turning 50% of submissions away wasn't an option,
especially as we wanted to present a broad overview of what was going on in
the field.

Slides weren't advanced automatically, but people also had 5 minutes and
were asked to stick to one essential idea, question or project. Reactions
were positive, although I think a few presenters might have been slightly
intimidated. Not everyone is a natural speaker like Alex. :-)

But I agree that shaking things up is good!

Cornelius

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:52 AM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z at danah.org> wrote:

> At the Digital Media & Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks
> (5 minutes, slides auto-forward).  One of our speakers failed to show up
> (which we later learned was because he was ill).  Lacking a presenter and
> not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do
> Powerpoint Karaoke.  In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an
> impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before.  While the
> entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4
>
> As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent
> the entire five minutes crying with laughter.
>
> Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex?  Ignite
> talks were the highlight of the conference.  And Alex's rendition of one
> topped all charts.  People were excited and energized. Shaking up the
> speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference.  I know
> many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR).  Can I
> strongly encourage you to shake it up some?  I mean, we're academics... we
> all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted
> time.  But constraints have value.  And they add value.  They force people
> to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they
> present information.  And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving
> them a sampler of awesome research.  And even when they don't like one talk,
> they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on.
>
> If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm
> happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML.  But please, for the fun of
> all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged
> improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or
> Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule?  <grin>
>
> danah
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-- 
Dr. Cornelius Puschmann, M.A.

Department for English Language and Linguistics
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
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40225 Düsseldorf
Germany

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Junior Researchers Group "Science and the Internet"
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