Tag: speakers

Judging Talk Proposals for Conferences [en]

[fr] Très difficile d'évaluer la qualité d'une proposition de conférence basé sur un résumé textuel (ce que je suis en train de faire à présent pour la conférence BlogTalk 2009 qui aura lieu à Jeju, en Corée du Sud). Il faudrait que les candidats donnent non seulement un descriptif écrit de leur proposition, mais aussi un court extrait vidéo (2-3 minutes), soit d'une conférence qu'ils ont déjà donnée, soit d'un "pitch" pour le sujet qu'ils proposent.

Just a passing thought, as I’m spending some time reviewing submissions for the upcoming BlogTalk 2009 conference in Jeju, South Korea.

Just as my proposal was reviewed (and rejected) last year, I am now on the other side of the fence, looking at proposal abstracts and trying to determine if they would make good presentations for the conference.

BlogTalk is an interesting conference, because it tries to bridge the academic and practitioner worlds. The submission process resulting from that led to some interesting discussions last year (academics are used to submitting papers all over the place and are paid for that, practitioners on the conference circuit are more used to being asked to come and talk) and as a result the process was modified somewhat for this year. Practitioners and academics alike submit a short abstract of their talk/paper/research, and people like me (the programme committee) review them.

What I am realizing, doing this, is that it is very hard to imagine if the proposals will produce good talks. I mean, I can judge if their content is interesting or not. I don’t know the people sending in the proposals, so I keep going from “ah, this could be really good if the speaker is competent” to “ew, if the speaker isn’t good this could be a nightmare”.

Already in my long-gone university days, I had understood that content is only half of the deal. Take great content but a crap speaker, you’ll lose half your audience (and I’m being nice).

In 2007 and 2008, I gave a fair amount of talks all over the place and organized my own conference. All this time on the “conference circuit” and amongst regular speakers led me to view it as something quite close to the entertainment business.

So, setting up a conference that will be successful means finding engaging speakers who will be able to talk about interesting topics. When I organized Going Solo (clearly a very different type of conference than BlogTalk, of course), I picked speakers I was familiar with and that I had already seen “in action”.

Back to screening proposals for conferences — of course, if you want an open process, you’re not going to know all the speakers. But how about asking candidates, alongside the written abstract, for a 2-3 minute video excerpt of them giving a talk, or pitching their proposal?

So, What's Going Solo About? [en]

[fr] Un avant-goût du programme de Going Solo. Il ne suffit pas de "savoir faire des trucs" pour avoir du succès en tant qu'indépendant. Il y a plein d'aspects "business" au boulot d'indépendant que l'on sous-estime souvent au départ, et qu'on doit apprendre sur le tas. Going Solo, ce sera l'occasion d'apprendre des choses comme par exemple comment fixer ses tarifs, se faire connaître, effectivement décrocher des mandats (et se faire payer!), trouver des clients ou les laisser nous trouver, expliquer au monde ce que l'on fait, trouver un équilibre entre travail et "vie" (pas évident quand on a fait de sa passion son métier), ou encore gérer l'administratif qui accompagne la vie réseautée que nous vivons aujourd'hui.

Je donne dans ce billet un plan des sujets que je désire couvrir durant la journée de conférences que sera Going Solo. Trois orateurs sont d'ores et déjà annoncés: Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman, et Martin Roell -- vous les connaissez probablement de nom. Je suis à la recherche d'autres bons orateurs, particulièrement un peu à l'extérieur de mon réseau, donc n'hésitez pas à me faire part de vos propositions!

Here we go, with the promised post. I swear I’ve been wanting to write this “tomorrow” for a few weeks now, but something always gets in the way. It’s late and I have a mighty cold, but as I promised, here I am, typing away on my chubby MacBook rather late at night (my MacBook looks chubby now because the MacBook Air has just been announced… and it’d make any laptop look overweight).

When I decided to set foot in the event business, I pretty soon had a whole bunch of ideas for conference topics. As a first, I picked the one that seemed the most exciting to me: a conference about freelancing.

As a freelancer, I’ve learnt — sometimes the hard way — that it’s not sufficient to know how to “do stuff” well to be successful in business. I think many of us freelancers are in the business because we have a passion for which there is a demand (ie, people are ready to pay for this stuff!), and we often struggle with the “business” side of being self-employed.

Going Solo is a chance to learn how to do things like set your rates, make yourself known, close deals, find clients or let them find you, explain what you do to the world, find a life-work balance, or deal with administrivia in the networked world we web people work in.

I know that the best value people usually get out of conferences is the networking and the contacts, more than the actual content of the talks. I’ve had the impression, however, that this is starting to be used as an excuse for poor content, “false advertising” of talk topics, and lousy speakers. I want none of that. Of course, I want you to come to Going Solo and meet great people, chat with colleagues, enjoy the coffee with friends, and code in the bean-bags (I want bean-bags in the lounge — anybody got any?) But I also want the content to be rich, coherent, and well-presented. After all, that is primarily what you’re paying for.

Here is an initial outline of the topics I think are important. (This doesn’t mean that these are talk titles — this is stuff I want the various talks to cover.) I’d really like to hear you if you think I’m missing stuff out or including things that are irrelevant. This is for you, after all.

  • skills a freelancer needs (doing the work, marketing and networking, contracts and cash flow)
  • fixing prices, closing deals, negotiating contracts (the hardcore businessy stuff)
  • what kind of work freelancers in the 2.0 world do (some jobs are more suitable for soloists than others)
  • marketing and taking care of one’s social capital (blogging… and being a good online citizen)
  • tools of the trade (what software/tools/methods can assist you as a freelancer?)
  • coworking and staying in touch with “colleagues” (compensating for “working alone” — we remain social animals)
  • challenges in making a passion into a job, dealing with the blurring of the life/work distinction
  • international clients, travel, different laws and tax rules, accounting
  • soloist or small business?
  • adapting to different kinds of clients (in particular, how do you deal with big corporations that you approach or who have approached you)

As you can see, there is plenty in there to keep us busy for a day!

I’m happy to announce that Suw Charman, Stowe Boyd, and Martin Roell (all three great speakers and good friends) have accepted my invitation to come and share their experience as soloists and help you benefit from what they have learned over the years. We’re still in the process of determining the exact topics they will cover in their talks, but I already wanted to let you know that they would be here in Lausanne on the 16th.

As we will have more than three speakers (four if you count me, as I’ll probably grab the microphone to say a few words ;-)), I’m open to suggestions. If you know good speakers who could cover part of the program I’m outlining above, do let me know. I’m particularly interested in bringing in people from outside my immediate network — and for that I need you.

I hope you find this first draft of the programme as exciting as I do, and I’m looking forward to reading your feedback.

Cross-posted on the Going Solo blog.

Back to Being a Low-Tech Audience [en]

[fr] Dans une conférence où beaucoup de blogueurs sont présents, on a besoin de pauses-blogging 😉 -- et peut-être aussi de présentations qui tiennent bien dans un billet? Suivent quelques suggestions pour les personnes qui font des conférences -- sachant que je ne fais certainement pas tout ce que je dis.

Running a bit late for Emmanuelle‘s talk on anonymity online, I decided to go in without my laptop, which was in the other room. Decision also fueled by my earlier cogitations about my decreasing attention span.

Well, there we are: I was more attentive and took notes on paper.

I was telling Robert that conferences like this lacked blogging breaks. The audience is in the real-time information business if you have lots of bloggers in the room, so if you don’t want them to spend half the talk time uploading photos, chatting, and writing up blog posts. So, how about give us blogging breaks, and plan post-sized talks? Wouldn’t that be neat?

For many people, the most interesting moments of a gathering like this is around and outside the talks. Try to change the balance a bit? I know there are organisational imperatives, but I’m sure a solution could be found.

Other than that, some ideas for speakers (and I’m aware I don’t do what I preach when I’m giving a talk):

  • Give me an outline of the talk, paper would be best (I’ll get lost somewhere else by trying to find it online). If I tune out of your talk for a minute (and I’m bound to) I need a chance to tune back in. An outline will help with that.
  • Be theatrical, keep me listening, or make me participate. Effective use of slides is good, but I don’t know how to do it so I won’t give you any advice on the topic.
  • Don’t talk to fast, particularly when the audio in the venue isn’t too good. Articulate. (Yeah. Sorry.)

Update: I took hand-written notes of Robert’s talk too. Lesson learnt.

My Notes of Robert Scoble's Talk

Now let’s see if you can decypher my handwriting!

Attention Span and Partial Attention [en]

[fr] Est-ce que l'habitude du multitâches devant l'écran m'a fait perdre mes pouvoirs de concentration? J'ai du mal à  suivre les conférences, alors qu'avec dix ans d'uni, on pourrait considérer que j'ai de l'entraînement...

I spent ten years at university. During those years, I attended lectures on a variety of subject, sometimes from 7am to 8pm, taking notes and understanding most of what was said.

What’s wrong with me now? I can’t seem to follow most of the talks given here. I remember having the same problem at BlogTalk 2.0 a couple of years back. Is it the partial attention thing, because of course, I can’t follow what is being said when I’m typing up a post or chatting in a backchannel. Or uploading photos.

Should I put the computer away and take notes by hand? My writing sucks now, and RSI clearly will prevent me from taking notes during two whole days.

Is it worse that that? Have years of multitasking in front of a screen impaired my ability to concentrate and focus on a single thing? Have I lost the power or the will to concentrate? That, I have to admit, is a scary idea.

On the other hand, maybe it’s just poor audio output in the room (thanks, Jérôme, for making me feel less alone about this) coupled to my usual not-so-good audio input, plus, in some cases, the fact I’m not used to following English spoken by non-native speakers (particularly francophones, because I usually speak French with them)? And the fact that I’m tired?

Oh well. It’s probably a mixture of everything. I wonder if I shouldn’t have posted this on the Cheese Sandwich Blog — but it’s a little late for that.