[Free-RTC] dev-room talk selections, feedback needed

[Daniel Pocock]

Hi all,

The dev-room managers (Ralph, Iain, Saúl and myself) have had some
private discussions about the talk selections and I just wanted to share
some of that with the wider community and potential speakers before we
make final decisions and publish a schedule.

There were 27 proposals, 26 talks and one a request to participate in
the lounge.  6 proposals belong to people who have been selected for
main track, that leaves 20 proposals.

Of the 20 proposals remaining, they come from 18 different speakers (two
people submitted multiple proposals).

We have 8.5 hours to fill, from 10:30 to 19:00.  For 18 speakers, that
is 28.3 minutes each, probably 20-25 minutes each with 5 minute gaps.

Looking at it more closely, if we have 18 talks, there would be 17
gaps of 5 minutes (85 minutes) and 425 minutes of actual talks.  Those
425 minutes could be divided in various ways:

 18 talks, 23 minutes each

 6 talks of 30 minutes + 12 talks of 20 minutes

 5 talks of 40 minutes + 13 talks of 15 minutes

Arguments in favor of doing all 18:
- easy for the dev-room admins
- People make a big effort to come to FOSDEM and it is nice if everybody
can make a contribution
- more speakers may also mean more volunteers in the lounge, more
potential contacts with sponsors for the dinner, etc
- At another recent event I attended, TADHack Paris, people were doing a
talk and demo in about 5 minutes, they got through about 15 of these in
2.5 hours, videos are online.  TEDx gives people 18 minutes and that is
very popular with audiences.  People who want to make long demos can
also make their own demo video and publish it online very easily these
days, so maybe we don't have to worry about giving anybody a long talk slot.

Arguments in favor of doing less than 18 talks:
- Some of the speakers can really use a full 45 minutes or an hour, some
demos don't fit in 23 minutes.
- 18 speakers = 17 gaps = 85 minutes lost
- in a short talk, the speaker really has to be careful about time and
do everything correctly
- more time for questions after talks

How do people feel?  Do any of the speakers have concerns about any of
these ideas?

Regards,

Daniel