At 07:36 AM 12/22/00 +0100, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
Sometimes presentations are good. If they leave plenty of time to talk
about them.
OK, but let's talk about that. Presentations should open and guide
discussion: present the issues that need to be hashed out, propose and
explain approaches, and generally lead the working group towards useful
consensus. If we were handfuls of engineers, we would use white boards to
hash out ideas; in groups of 500, you need something you can project to
accomplish the same thing. Presentations are that engineer's white board;
they should contribute to the discussion, but not replace it.
What we unfortunately commonly find is presentations *instead*of*
discussion. That's what people are being concerned about and saying is wrong.