[FOSDEM] Embedded, Mobile and Automotive devroom @FOSDEM2021

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 3:55 PM Alasdair G Kergon <agk at fosdem.org> wrote:

> The plan is for the presentations to be streamed from pre-recordedings
> to make sure that that part runs as smoothly as possible, but to have
> live textual chat during the presentations and live video Q&A and
> discussion afterwards.

i can say that this is how XDC2020 was conducted (using freenode irc
for chat).  it was - and i am not kidding here - the best "conference"
i have ever been to.  far, *far* better than *any* "live" conference
and i have been to several, in the past 25 years.

why?

it was very simple: i was able, during my *own talk*, to chat with the
other attendees and give them "running commentary" (plus explanations
of things i had missed, or stuff i knew was coming up).  far from
being a distraction this resulted in a lively debate, questions,
jokes, quips and people wishing to engage and talk in break-out rooms,
one of them for longer than the actual talk.

i came away from the whole experience going "wow that was utterly
frickin awesome and valuable".

by total contrast, two other "online" conferences forced me to use a
web-based system, with *no* fallback position for either chat or
audio.  despite warning the organisers that i would be unable to
interact with anyone, and would be unable even to hear audio (i run
jackd for real-time music composition: it prevents and prohibits
*both* firefox *and* chrome from playing audio), they said - and this
is not a joke:

"we looked at it and we found nobody else with problems.  we therefore
conclude that because you are in the minority, we can't be bothered.
if you have audio problems, you get to fix them yourself: sorry, but
basically we don't care".

as a result, one of them i didn't even bother to log in to hear my own talk.

i leave those two wildly diametrically opposed experiences with you to consider.

l.