XDC 2018 feedback

[Martin Peres]

On 01/10/2018 20:12, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 6:55 PM Jason Ekstrand <jason at jlekstrand.net> wrote:
>> I'll echo the surprise shared by Markus about not having any window system or input talks this year.
> 
> As mentioned, we only had very few compositor talks, and 0 input
> talks. If you want those, make them happen, XDC program is what
> attendees make of it.
> 
>> My only real comment was that I think we could have packed more talks in.  We had to turn down piles of talks and, at the same time, often had 20 minute breaks between talks just because someone's talk didn't burn the entire 45-50 minutes.  We probably could have accepted more talks and made the conference better had we done a bunch of 20 minute slots and reserved the 45-minute slots for the talks that actually needed the time.
> 
> Yup, that didn't work, because we didn't ask speakers how much time
> they want. A few others mentioned this too, definitely need to fix
> that for next year. With lightning talks, demos, and workshop tracks
> we still managed to squeeze ~40 things into the schedule, so
> personally I'm not yet worried with rejecting proposals. We've also
> extended the travel sponsoring policy, you don't have to be a main
> track speaker to be eligible. What I personally want to avoid is a
> re-run of XDC2016, where we've systematically overrun the program
> because it was too densely packed. But agreed that this year ended up
> with a bit too much discussion space in the main track.

That's one way of seeing it. What I think was going on is that we did
not have anyone keeping track of time, nor enforcing it. Making every
slot bigger than what presenters need make presentations slower-paced,
which lowers the focus of attendees and reduces the amount of content
and discussions we may have.

I think there is a balance to strike here, but given that the half-hour
slot is quite generally appreciated throughout conferences, and the
hour-long one being reserved for keynotes type of talks, I think we
should get back to that.

Martin

> 
> Thanks, Daniel
> 
> 
>>
>> --Jason
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 9:40 AM Samuel Iglesias Gonsálvez <siglesias at igalia.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello!
>>>
>>> Now that XDC 2018 is over, it is time to gather feedback!
>>>
>>> We would like to ask to all the attendees and the ones following us
>>> online for feedback about the conference. We are going to forward the
>>> received feedback to X.Org Foundation in order to take it into account
>>> for future events.
>>>
>>> Feel free to reply publicly here, or send it privately to us
>>> (xdc2018 at gpul.org).
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> Sam
>>>
>>>
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>>
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> 
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