http://ericholscher.comEric Holscher - Posts tagged questions2024-02-28T16:22:29.007976+00:00ABloghttp://ericholscher.com/blog/2016/nov/12/questions-at-conferences/Questions after talks at conferences2016-11-12T00:00:00+00:00<section id="questions-after-talks-at-conferences">
<p>At many conferences,
people allow the audience to ask questions after the talks.
I want to argue that this is an anti-pattern in many ways,
and some solutions that have worked that I recommend.</p>
<section id="issues-with-questions">
<h2>Issues with questions</h2>
<p>There are two primary audiences that have issues with questions:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>Speakers</p></li>
<li><p>The audience</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Let’s start with speakers.
Many first-time speakers that I know have an intense anxiety around having the audience ask questions.
They think,
“I am going to go up and give a talk,
and then someone in the audience will contradict or embarrass me for lack of knowledge afterward.”
<strong>Audience questions after talks are one of the biggest sources of stress for speakers.</strong></p>
<p>Now for the audience.
They have chosen to attend a talk to hear from a specific speaker about a topic they are knowledgeable on.
If there are 250 people in the room,
each minute of the talk is over 4 hours of combined time.
<strong>When you offer up a microphone to anyone in the audience,
you are now offering 4 hours of peoples life to an unaudited question and answer that likely only provides value to a small minority of attendees.</strong>
This is not a good use of anyone’s time,
and often audiences feel trapped in a talk room during Q&A time.</p>
</section>
<section id="better-approaches">
<h2>Better approaches</h2>
<p>Here are a few different approaches that I recommend a lot more than “let anyone in the audience ask a question publicly”.</p>
<section id="speaker-goes-to-the-front-of-stage-for-questions">
<h3>Speaker goes to the front of stage for questions</h3>
<p>At my own conferences,
<a class="reference external" href="http://www.writethedocs.org/">Write the Docs</a>,
we have established the norm of not having full audience questions.
After each talk we ask the speaker to come to the front of the stage,
and then have a conversation with members of the audience with questions.</p>
<p>This achieves a couple beneficial results:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>People are empowered to ask questions that are more specific to their situation, instead of trying to general them for a larger audience</p></li>
<li><p>The question asker isn’t given a “stage” to promote their own projects or ideas</p></li>
<li><p>The speaker isn’t worried about being “called out” in front of the full room</p></li>
<li><p>Everyone else in the audience is free to do whatever they want</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I stole this idea from <a class="reference external" href="https://xoxofest.com/">XOXO</a>,
but a lot of events do a version of this.</p>
</section>
<section id="questions-to-the-speaker-are-moderated">
<h3>Questions to the speaker are moderated</h3>
<p>Another approach I’ve seen work well is that the audience is allowed to ask questions,
but they are moderated.
This can be done in a couple different ways:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>A <cite>#questions</cite> Slack or IRC channel where people can ask questions</p></li>
<li><p>Index cards handed out at the beginning of a talk and collected at the end</p></li>
</ul>
<p>This allows one person to moderate the questions,
and forces them to be asked in a direct way.
It also removes the “I have a statement, not a question” problem,
because all questions are filtered through an intermediary.</p>
<p>This has a few benefits as well:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>People are still able to ask the speaker for clarifiaction/explanation on parts of their talk publicly, and it benefits everyone</p></li>
<li><p>The speaker knows they won’t get ambushed by the moderator</p></li>
<li><p>The moderator can blend the questions together into a narrative and group questions in a meaningful way</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I’ve seen this work quite well at conferences like <a class="reference external" href="https://djangounderthehood.com/">Django Under The Hood</a> and <a class="reference external" href="http://pydx.org/">PyDX</a>.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section id="questions-are-your-responsibility">
<h2>Questions are your responsibility</h2>
<p>As the organizer of an event,
the way that you structure the event has a direct impact on people’s experience.
<strong>Opening the room to questions and not doing any moderation is abdicating your responsibility as an organizer.</strong></p>
<p>I highly recommend that you adopt a more equitable approach to questions at conferences,
and make them more enjoyable for everyone involved.</p>
</section>
</section>
At many conferences,
people allow the audience to ask questions after the talks.
I want to argue that this is an anti-pattern in many ways,
and some solutions that have worked that I recommend.2016-11-12T00:00:00+00:00http://ericholscher.com/blog/2018/jan/4/business-questions-for-2018/Business questions I’m working on in 20182018-01-04T00:00:00+00:00<section id="business-questions-i-m-working-on-in-2018">
<p>In November 2017 there was a lovely gathering of independent business folks in Portland, Oregon called <a class="reference external" href="https://www.zebrasunite.com/dazzlecon/">DazzleCon</a>.
Leading in to that lovely event there was an introduction thread where everyone explained their business.
It caused me to really think deeply about the problems facing my two fledging but promising communities,
and I wanted to record my answers here publicly.</p>
<p>These are the big questions that I’m thinking about for the communities I help shepherd in 2018.</p>
<section id="my-email-to-the-dazzlecon-attendees">
<h2>My email to the DazzleCon attendees</h2>
<p>Hey there fellow Zebras!</p>
<p>My name is <a class="reference external" href="http://ericholscher.com/">Eric Holscher</a>, and it’s been heartwarming to read all the work that everyone here is doing. I feel a little out of place, but hopefully I can explain what I’m doing in similar terms.</p>
<p>Most of my work is focused on improving documentation in the software industry.
My view is that software, and open source specifically, can be a force for equality across the world,
and documentation is a fundamental tool to lower the barrier to entry.</p>
<p>My work involved two primary things:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p><a class="reference external" href="https://readthedocs.org/">Read the Docs</a>, which is a documentation publishing platform provided for free to open source projects.</p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference external" href="http://www.writethedocs.org/">Write the Docs</a>, which is a world-wide community of people who care about documentation (we call them documentarians :)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Since we’re here to talk about business, both of these projects are trying to address problems with business models:</p>
<section id="ethical-advertising">
<h3>Ethical Advertising</h3>
<p>Read the Docs launched an effort that we call <a class="reference external" href="https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ethical-advertising.html">Ethical Advertising</a>. The elevator pitch is “newspaper advertising for the internet” – we don’t track users and only target our advertising based on the content of the pages users are looking at.</p>
<p>This has been our solution to a long-term search for sustainability in the <a class="reference external" href="https://www.fordfoundation.org/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/">open source infrastructure</a>, which is the larger narrative I’m happy to folks about, and I think it mirrors a lot of the existing funding struggles for public goods and services.</p>
</section>
<section id="non-exclusive-membership-models">
<h3>Non-exclusive membership models</h3>
<p>Write the Docs is primarily funded through the operation of conferences, and we’re looking to expand into some kind of membership model. We have a strong history of inclusiveness, which includes offering all of our content and access to our community for free.</p>
<p>We’re hoping to create a membership model that isn’t based on access to exclusive content or resources, but instead of framed more as an investment in the ongoing maintenance of the community and production of resources. From what I’ve seen, this funding model hasn’t been very effective, but I’d be really curious to talk about this more with other folks who might have experience in it.</p>
<p>Looking forward to talking more with y’all next month!</p>
<p>Cheers,
Eric</p>
<aside class="system-message">
<p class="system-message-title">System Message: INFO/1 (<span class="docutils literal">/home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/ericholschercom/checkouts/latest/site/blog/2018/jan/4/business-questions-for-2018.rst</span>, line 54); <em><a href="#id1">backlink</a></em></p>
<p>Duplicate implicit target name: “ethical advertising”.</p>
</aside>
</section>
</section>
</section>
In November 2017 there was a lovely gathering of independent business folks in Portland, Oregon called DazzleCon.
Leading in to that lovely event there was an introduction thread where everyone explained their business.
It caused me to really think deeply about the problems facing my two fledging but promising communities,
and I wanted to record my answers here publicly.2018-01-04T00:00:00+00:00