On Aug 4, 2013, at 4:20 PM, Brian E Carpenter
<brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
There is another equally important reason for having them well in advance,
for both on-site and remote attendees: so that participants can review
them in advance, decide which of several clashing sessions to attend, and
even prepare questions. This applies even if the slides summarise a draft
that was available two or three weeks in advance. Things are often
expressed differently in the slides.
By that logic, I should also write out a script of what I'm going to say and
post that 1 week in advance, along with a youtube recording of me presenting
it. At least for me, most of the content/meat is verbal, not pictorial. The
slides aren't a script of text I'm reading out loud.
As for conflicts, I agree they truly do suck, but I wouldn't want you to
pick/skip mine based on my poor slide-making abilities. In the worst case, you
can review the recordings afterward and email comments/questions/flames to the
list.
Finally: a deadline one week before the meeting is no harder to meet
than one minute before the meeting. If it's a zero-tolerance deadline,
people will meet it.
This would just encourage more presentations to be graphical reproductions of
the drafts. I'm cool with having those types of slides as well, even well in
advance - but only separate from the ones I present in a meeting. We should be
encouraging email discussions to take place before the physical meeting hour...
and I don't want set-in-stone slides to skip things introduced by, cover ground
already covered by, or made moot by, those discussions. I don't know about
other folks, but I really have changed slide content based on mailing list and
in-person discussions before the meeting slot. This even happened to me just
this past week at IETF 87.
These aren't presentations of academic papers, corporate position statements,
or tutorial classes. Real-time content and discussion is good for WG meetings.
What *would* be good to have 7 days or more in advance are the Technical and
O&A Plenary slides. They shouldn't be changing, afaict. And that way we can
figure out if we can have those nights free for other things, or if it's worth
going to the Plenaries instead. But I assume those slides already are made
available well in advance. (right?)
-hadriel