2:47 p.m.
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 5:54 AM, Stephen Gallagher <sgallagh(a)redhat.com> wrote:
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On 05/16/2013 04:45 PM, Tom Callaway wrote:
> I'm interested in what people think about this.
>
> Right now, when you submit a proposal for a talk (or
> hackfest/workshop), the title and abstract are made public, but the
> identify of the speaker is not.
>
> The intent was to try to remove bias on voting for the speaker as
> opposed to the topic, but several people have disagreed with that
> intent.
>
> Should we make the name of the proposed presenter public as well?
> (Note that the selection committee was always going to be able to
> see the full data including presenter names).
>
I suppose I'd be one of those to disagree with the intent as one of
the criteria for evaluating a talk would be whether the speaker is
known to be good at making informative things entertaining and whether
the speaker is knowledgable in the area they are talking on.
Question though: If the selection committee sees the presenter names,
how does that hiding the names on the public page prevent bias?
(perhaps I've missed out on there being a community voted
pre-screening or something...)
Well, I think it's probably best to continue as we have begun. People
who have filed their proposals with the expectation of anonymity
should not have that expectation changed on them. That might cause
some resentment.
As an attendee I'd rather see the speaker names but I can understand
this. FESCo today wondered if any fesco member was following up on
the Fedora Planning process/change how Fedora is produced and released
discussions from FUDCon lawrence. Although there are two talks that
look like they might be about the process, without the speaker
information it's not possible for us to know the answer to that and
who we need to coordinate with to get our collective ideas right (from
the central flock page.. we'll just have to email the rest of FESCo to
find out if anyone is the person who submitted those).
Perhaps the flock organizers can ask people who don't need anonymity
to add their names to their proposal abstract (via blogs or other).
The submit a proposal page could also be updated to mention that
adding your name to the abstract is the only way people viewing the
list of proposals will know who is giving the talk.
Actually, I think displaying the authors of the submissions might be
intimidating as well. We'd really like to be seeing submissions from
less-well-known members of the community. (AKA "tomorrow's community
leaders"). I like the idea of seeing all the ideas come in without
being intimidated that they're all being submitted by "famous" people.
For this part -- not sure how to reply. I understand the goal but I'm
not sure the argument holds up in the real world. The conferences
I've gone to recently (Pycon, GSoC Mentor's Summit, FISLe, FUDCon)
have had people submit talks because they had something to share
regardless of how well known their "competitors" might be. OTOH, not
all conferences have a list of proposed talks... many hold off until
the talks are actually accepted. My gut says that people who actually
want to get up in front of their peers and say stuff aren't likely to
be intimidated because someone speaking in the next room is a
community luminary. I know I'd be more intimidated if the luminary
was sitting in the front row of the audience with a scowl on their
face ;-).
-Toshio