[GeekDinner-planning] talk list / content

[Jonathan Endersby]

Jonathan Hitchcock wrote:

> The talks aren't the drawcard for the dinners, they're just an excuse to
> hold them - people come to the dinners to meet up and "network" and so on.

Really? Personally I'd rather have done nothing than listen to some of 
the talks that I've had to endure. i.e. I'd be quite happy to have a 
geek dinner and *not* have any talks rather than have 5 crap ones.

Having said that, I realize that we can never predict how good or bad 
someone's talk is going to be (And we've had some awesome talks), BUT we 
could go a little way to being pragmatic about it... see below.


> The trouble is, we can't tell people that they can't talk.  In fact, we
> don't want to.  People can come and talk about whatever they want - it's
> all voluntary and participatory, and it's not up to us to try to force
> it down a certain path.

Can't we? I think we should definitely ask people who we don't *know* to 
  submit a talk overview. I know this sounds massively nazi'ish for 
something that should essentially be free and hippie'ish, but other 
people have been burnt. A few weeks back there was a guy at a mac 
conference who's talk was all about why black people don't use apple. It 
wasn't funny and it caused some "issues".

On the slightly less dramatic end of the scale, the guy who talked about 
social media last time could have focussed on something more specific 
rather than rattling off the list of who's who in the web 2.0 world. I 
don't know him from a bar of soap, but he's obviously a smart guy and 
I'm sure he could have presented it differently and made more of an impact.

Maybe we just need to encourage an environment where the people who are 
planning on talking bounce their ideas around the planning list (or a 
-talks list) so that we can hone their 5 minutes into the best possible 
5 minutes.

Wat dink julle?

j.


-- 
Jonathan Endersby
Frogfoot Networks
w: http://www.frogfoot.com
t: +27 21 689 3867
e: jonathan at frogfoot.com