[kwlug-disc] March presentations; How long?

[Paul Nijjar]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 12:32:15PM -0500, Tim Laurence wrote:

>    I am signed up to present LVM on demo night next month. I am going
> about putting my presentation together and am wondering about the
> timing. I was initially under the understanding that I had 20 minutes
> but since there is only three presenters it seems the real split
> should be something like (120 minutes - 20 minutes for overhead) / 3
> or about 33 minutes per presenter. The extra 13 minutes would allow me
> to go into more background and take more questions so I am a fan of
> it. What does everyone else think? Should we have more time for the
> three of us or a shorter meeting?

In my experience people end up taking half an hour per presentation
because of the discussions that erupt. There can also be setup issues,
and of course herding the cats back to their seats after the break
takes time as well. 

I agree that the math should not work out this way, but as far as I
can tell empirically you are probably best off preparing 20 minutes of
content. I am sure that discussion and questions will push you to 30
minutes or so. I highly doubt that we will end the meeting early just
because there are "only" three presentations in two hours. 

Weirdly enough, having two presentations during a night means that
each presenter can prepare 35-40 minutes of content. 

- Paul

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org