awesome-conference-practices
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kitze
Moderators on QA sessions
We were talking with a speaker from JSHeroes also, that having a direct feed of Q&A session (call it a screen or over a mic) is really bad because you might put the speaker in a really akward position because of lack of reponse or because the answer might be too opinionated.
It's pretty similar to the twitter feed thing, put a moderator that will read all the questions people post and select the two that sound more interesting and reasonable to tackle in a conference context.
You can also ask the speaker what kind of things you won't be able to answer beforehand to prevent akward moments.
This is just my opinion, but I really dislike Q&A in front of the audience. I think it's way better to have the speakers be available at a certain place at a certain time for an actual conversation.
This opinion is based on my experience as a speaker, a meetup organiser and a conference attendee. I feel a lot of speakers go along with Q&A because it's the "done thing" and think that a way better experience for both speakers and attendees can be had with conversations. I may be wrong though.
We were talking with a speaker from JSHeroes also, that having a direct feed of Q&A session (call it a screen or over a mic) is really bad because you might put the speaker in a really akward position because of lack of reponse or because the answer might be too opinionated.
I usually ask the conference if it’s possible to skip questions at the end of the presentation. I recommend inviting people to come see me after the talk where we can chat face to face.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s not really about being afraid not being able to answer. It’s more that:
- Other attendees are likely not to care about the question and the answer. I know I’m usually not really interested about Q&A.
- This is a very awkward way to have a conversation. I’m on a stage with a mic and the person is somewhere in the room where I can barely see them.
- When I say the last sentence of my talk, I want to take a few minutes for myself to breath and snap back to reality.
Yeap, all of what Hugo said 👏👏👏
I didn’t want to go to further because I’ve only spoken in meetups.
But basically ask the speaker if it’s OK to have a Q&A after the talk and if some filtering might be needed.
Like everyone else, I agree with Hugo! One more thing from an attendee point of view: when the speaker finished up, it's like a big ta-da! 🎉(ideally) and QA drags down the party. You only usually finish QA at the lowest point ("any more questions? no? no? ok.... everyone stands around awkwardly ...so I guess that's it) It's kind of a bummer.
Oh, one more thing, plus as a speaker, the quality of the questions one on one are SO MUCH BETTER. When people ask questions during a Q & A, they're usually pretty performative: "well, I know that x does y" (how do you respond to that? I just usually say "ok! that's awesome!" but it's not a question really).
The questions I get in the hallway are detailed, unique, respectful, and fun! I usually come away from them feeling like I got to know the person a little. Sometimes we pair on some issue they're having- so cool! Questions in themselves aren't to blame, it's the forum.
Hey, I'm giving a lot of thought to this after JSHeroes. Very few speakers actually had time for Q&A and I felt that few actually wanted to go along with them. However, I got a lot of feedback from the audience that wish to have this section after each talk.
I'm also looking at how other conferences are doing Q&A with the MC in a very organized manner, but that takes time and you get less content in the agenda.
It's still debatable, but I'm leaning towards creating dedicated areas for Q&A for the breaks or just simply encourage people to ask more questions on the hallway.
One final note is that it can be also a very culture specific thing. For example, in Romania, people are afraid of asking a direct question. Having a tool that manages this clears their fears of being embarrassed in front of the speakers.
I'd be interested to hear what other people think, but the idea of a dedicated place where speakers could go and people could ask them questions sounds like an awesome idea!
ScotlandJS have a 20 minute break after every 3 talks where the speakers will be available in a certain location for attendees to go to speak to and ask questions. I've not experienced this approach as a speaker (I will in summer), but it appeals to me way more than answering questions on stage.
On Mon, 23 Apr 2018, 16:51 Sarah Drasner, [email protected] wrote:
I'd be interested to hear what other people think, but the idea of a dedicated place where speakers could go and people could ask them questions sounds like an awesome idea!
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This is something that's definitely not set in stone, but one of the things that I liked was what happened with Mathias Bynens, even when it wasn't plan it's good to consider it.
You open a channel/thread where atendees can post questions, speakers then create a small doc responding to the ones they feel worth. No bummer, question can be anonymous, no interruptions, everybody wins (?)