i have to share.... [aka: why we need to introduce fun talks to our conferences]
At the Digital Media & Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks (5 minutes, slides auto-forward). One of our speakers failed to show up (which we later learned was because he was ill). Lacking a presenter and not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do Powerpoint Karaoke. In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before. While the entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4 As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent the entire five minutes crying with laughter. Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex? Ignite talks were the highlight of the conference. And Alex's rendition of one topped all charts. People were excited and energized. Shaking up the speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference. I know many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR). Can I strongly encourage you to shake it up some? I mean, we're academics... we all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted time. But constraints have value. And they add value. They force people to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they present information. And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving them a sampler of awesome research. And even when they don't like one talk, they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on. If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML. But please, for the fun of all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule? <grin> danah
danah, Steve, and everyone else who's mentioned this, It happens that the IR 12.0 program committee has been discussing doing something like Ignite talks at this year's conference, and it certainly fits with the theme of Performance and Participation. (By the way, Alex, *awesome* improv!) So stay tuned, and start thinking about exciting short-form talks you'd like to give or see. Lori
I've heard "Powerpoint Karaoke" also referred to as "Battle Decks" --e On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:52 PM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> wrote:
At the Digital Media & Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks (5 minutes, slides auto-forward). One of our speakers failed to show up (which we later learned was because he was ill). Lacking a presenter and not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do Powerpoint Karaoke. In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before. While the entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4
As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent the entire five minutes crying with laughter.
Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex? Ignite talks were the highlight of the conference. And Alex's rendition of one topped all charts. People were excited and energized. Shaking up the speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference. I know many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR). Can I strongly encourage you to shake it up some? I mean, we're academics... we all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted time. But constraints have value. And they add value. They force people to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they present information. And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving them a sampler of awesome research. And even when they don't like one talk, they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on.
If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML. But please, for the fun of all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule? <grin>
danah _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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I agree with danah; Alex was amazingly awesome at improvising, being energetic, and making a coherent point about adaptability and innovation! Coincidentally, at last year's DML, the panelists of the mangle of play session (which I organized) agreed to keep our talks to 5 minutes, letting us have a full-room discussion for most of the time instead. I wanted us to push at the traditional conference format even further and present each others' work, but they wouldn't have it. :( It went very well, and as far as I know the only complaint was that I swore (trying to frame it as an informal space with my language) too much. :) mark On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Elijah Wright <elijah.wright@gmail.com>wrote:
I've heard "Powerpoint Karaoke" also referred to as "Battle Decks"
--e
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:52 PM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> wrote:
At the Digital Media & Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks (5 minutes, slides auto-forward). One of our speakers failed to show up (which we later learned was because he was ill). Lacking a presenter and not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do Powerpoint Karaoke. In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before. While the entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4
As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent the entire five minutes crying with laughter.
Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex? Ignite talks were the highlight of the conference. And Alex's rendition of one topped all charts. People were excited and energized. Shaking up the speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference. I know many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR). Can I strongly encourage you to shake it up some? I mean, we're academics... we all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted time. But constraints have value. And they add value. They force people to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they present information. And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving them a sampler of awesome research. And even when they don't like one talk, they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on.
If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML. But please, for the fun of all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule? <grin>
danah _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Mark Chen | @mcdanger | markdangerchen.net Post-Doctoral Scholar | Games Ethnographer LIFE Center | UW Institute for Science and Math Education This was sent from a PC with a full-size keyboard; misspellings and brevity are entirely my fault.
We decided a use a (somewhat) similar format ("lightning talks") at a conference on e-science last year because of the large number of submissions. A lot of interesting contributions were about newly launched projects, so we felt like turning 50% of submissions away wasn't an option, especially as we wanted to present a broad overview of what was going on in the field. Slides weren't advanced automatically, but people also had 5 minutes and were asked to stick to one essential idea, question or project. Reactions were positive, although I think a few presenters might have been slightly intimidated. Not everyone is a natural speaker like Alex. :-) But I agree that shaking things up is good! Cornelius On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:52 AM, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> wrote:
At the Digital Media & Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks (5 minutes, slides auto-forward). One of our speakers failed to show up (which we later learned was because he was ill). Lacking a presenter and not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do Powerpoint Karaoke. In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before. While the entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4
As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent the entire five minutes crying with laughter.
Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex? Ignite talks were the highlight of the conference. And Alex's rendition of one topped all charts. People were excited and energized. Shaking up the speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference. I know many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR). Can I strongly encourage you to shake it up some? I mean, we're academics... we all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted time. But constraints have value. And they add value. They force people to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they present information. And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving them a sampler of awesome research. And even when they don't like one talk, they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on.
If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML. But please, for the fun of all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule? <grin>
danah _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Dr. Cornelius Puschmann, M.A. Department for English Language and Linguistics Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Building 23.11, Level 1, Room 21 Universitätsstrasse 1 40225 Düsseldorf Germany +49 211 81 15927 (office) Nachwuchsforschergruppe "Wissenschaft und Internet" / Junior Researchers Group "Science and the Internet" http://nfgwin.uni-duesseldorf.de
In my classes I work with the so called Pecha Kucha format for students' presentations: 20 slides, auto-forward, 20 seconds each. So no more than 6:40 for each presentation! Amazing how this improves not only the design of PPT (no more boring text slides with dull bullets) but also the focus of the argument and the debate in class. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_kucha Works on conferences and party-like Pecha Kucha nights as well... Marianne On 9-3-11 6:52, danah boyd wrote:
At the Digital Media& Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks (5 minutes, slides auto-forward). One of our speakers failed to show up (which we later learned was because he was ill). Lacking a presenter and not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do Powerpoint Karaoke. In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before. While the entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4
As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent the entire five minutes crying with laughter.
Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex? Ignite talks were the highlight of the conference. And Alex's rendition of one topped all charts. People were excited and energized. Shaking up the speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference. I know many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR). Can I strongly encourage you to shake it up some? I mean, we're academics... we all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted time. But constraints have value. And they add value. They force people to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they present information. And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving them a sampler of awesome research. And even when they don't like one talk, they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on.
If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML. But please, for the fun of all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule?<grin>
danah _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- met vriendelijke groeten, Marianne van den Boomen Media and Culture Studies | University Utrecht Office: Kromme Nieuwegracht 20 (room T2.13A) Mail: Muntstraat 2a | 3512 EV UTRECHT Phone: +31 (0)30 253 9607 M.V.T.vandenBoomen@uu.nl | www.hum.uu.nl www.newmediastudies.nl | www.vandenboomen.org
participants (6)
-
Cornelius Puschmann -
danah boyd -
Elijah Wright -
loriken＠illinois.edu -
Marianne van den Boomen -
Mark Chen