[LCA2019 Chat] Lightning talks

[Ewen McNeill]

On 18/01/19 10:27 AM, Christopher Neugebauer wrote:
> We experimented with curation last year to make sure that new speakers
> got a chance to go on stage, and also to make sure that some of the
> same old faces didn't chew up all the available time. Curation really
> helped with that. It also really improved the quality, and let us make
> sure we had a truly wide range of topics. I really hope we continue
> curating talks into this year too.

FWIW, I *really* liked the approach chosen at PyConAU 2018 of having 
half the lightning talk speakers be brand new speakers (never spoken 
before at the conference), and the other half being "open to all" (but 
heavily curated).  It'd be great if we could do this at LCA2019 too.

I agree with others, lightning talks can be some of the best 
presentation sessions at a conference, particularly in terms of hearing 
about a wide variety of things to look into more later.  And some of the 
best lightning talks tend to be the "how can I fit lots of awesome 
content into 5 minutes" (pjf is excellent at this :-) ), rather than the 
"it's only 5 minutes, I'll just wing it" lightning talks.  So 
encouraging more planned talks than "sure, I'll sign up while it's open" 
helps too.

Ewen