Tue, 09/29/2020 - 16:33
Hello everyone!
We would like to know if any of you are questioning presenting at this year's online Annual Meeting because of the length (10 minutes to present, plus 5 minutes for Q & A) we assigned to each presentation.
Many thanks--your feedback is greatly appreciated and will be considered!
--AAVSO
I wasn't planning to present at this meeting (no new results ready at this time)... but 10 minutes is awfully short, IMHO. I probably always try to shoehorn too much in to a talk (I find the regular 15+5 format is tight!), but I believe I do always try to present explanatory material, so listeners can better understand the reason for the observations, and the results. If faced with a really short time slot, I would have to reduce explantory material.
Fortunately this isn't facebook where people could respond to this with a "huge sigh of relief" emoji ...
Gary Billings
Thanks for your feedback!
I have only attended one AAVSO meeting (and enjoyed it greatly), but I have attended my own professional society meetings for over 40 years, so maybe my experience relevant
One reason to adopt a 15-minute time limit (as we have in my home society) is that lots of people want to report their research and 15 minutes seems a reasonable time format for doing so. If this is the situation with AAVSO, then 15 minutes should be the normal allotment of time; don't micromanage the time but expect less than the full 15 minutes to allow for questions. There is an art to packaging 12 minutes of talk and 3 minutes for questions that builds character. I have seen presenters who totally blow their presentations by allocating all their time to preliminaries and then get marched off stage before they presented their results. I bet that anyone who has attended a meeting with rigorous time limits has seen the same thing.
Some talks simply take a bit more time. They tend to be on more general topics concerning methods, techniques or results of interest to all. Such talks might have a 30-minute time limit. It would be up to the presenter to provide justification for the extra time. Truly general talks are plenary talks, and the usual format is one hour. Symposia organizers might be given a block of time that they organize themselves.
Ed
I like Ed's idea of having at two types of presentation shorter and longer. In my experience many of the (to me) most interesting and important presentations need more then 10 minutes plus 5min Q&A. The onus should be on the selection committee to decide which presentations get more time.
The presenters would also have more time if we did away with the questions at the end of each presentation. Instead, there should be time set aside for questions at the end of each morning and afternoon session, but not as a panel. The presenters would make themselves available for questions at specified locations inside the hall. This would save time for the presentations and I think it would self organize into small discussions amongst people with similar interests and lead to more informal discussion later.
Phil
No dribbling. Not Basketball: I wonder if it is usefull for presenters to provide a paper and a speech outline or slides to the selection committee ahead of the meeting. It should be a committe in order to avoid bias when assigning time.
Ray