[alsa-devel] Plumbers: Please split audio topics into separate sessions

[Mark Brown]

On Mon, Aug 06, 2012 at 10:11:44PM +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
> On 08/06/2012 09:29 PM, Takashi Iwai wrote:

>> Well, as already announced, each topic was planned to be about 20
>> minutes, so I don't think we need to extend session time.

> Judging from our last experience, where we had a two-hour session on  
> Sunday and then had to reschedule on Wednesday for two more hours, and  
> yet had to cancel the topic I was about to introduce, because everybody  
> was tired (and waiting for lunch), I certainly beg to differ!

Hrm?  Was this Plumbers or the BoF in Prague last year?

>> Of course, it's possible to ask more slots, if you are sure that one
>> topic would need really 40 minutes discussions.

> It's the discussions that take time.

On the other hand if we don't have much concrete to discuss then it can
end up being too long.

I guess this is one of the concerns I have with having lots of sessions
- it means we've split topics up and have less play to manage time
overall, it means we either cover less or take more time.  The
flexibility for attendees is good, though - have to see how the
tradeoffs work.

> Also all of the 45 minutes is not effective discussion/presentation  
> time: Assume that we first wait 5 minutes for all people to appear, then  
> we have 5 minutes presentation and 15 - 20 minutes discussion for the  
> first topic, then 5 minutes are spent fiddling with the projector to  
> show the slides for the second topic...and suddenly there is just a few  
> minutes left for discussion of the second topic.

This is a bit of a concern, yes.  

> Also; we fly across half the world to get there, to spend just a few  
> minutes talking? Better have some margins. Maybe some session will end  
> early, but will it hurt? No. If we miss a topic, or have to cut it short  
> without a conclusion, will it hurt? Yes.

Perhaps the best thing is to have an additional session for overrun
rather than plan on everything being 45 minutes long?