Re: PGCon 2008 RFP

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Gavin M. Roy <gmr(at)myyearbook(dot)com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 13:47 -0500, Jonah H. Harris wrote:If you need a
>> standardized template to get your message across in a
>> useful way then you are likely not someone who should be doing public
>> speaking in the first place.
>>
>
> Personally, the only argument I see for standardization is it makes the
> conference feel more professional. Having been to a fair amount of
> conferences, I'm more impressed by the ones that put an emphasis on the
> polish of the event, matching collateral materials (logos, signage, etc).
> Obviously content is king, but second to content is how the content is
> conveyed, the design image of a conference.
>

Agreed. The goals of conference organizers, among other things, are to put
on a good conference and to hopefully grow the conference for the next
year. The "polish" makes the conference feel more professional and also
helps get buy-in from mangement that it's a serious event rather than a
little user-group conference. That buy-in does matter when you're trying to
get mangement to pay for conference registration and the travel expense.

> I'm not sure why the argument is not about image.
>

Agreed.

> It rather seems to be about the quality of a presenter and if a present
> needs/doesn't need standardization.
>

It seems to be mostly the presenters who are complaining :)

> There is no reason why a standard slide deck template can't encompass all
> different slide layouts. Think of it like letterhead for the conference.
>

Agreed. This is generally standard fare.

> The most compelling reason I've heard for non-standard templates is the
> wide variety of presentation tools (or lack of presentation tools)that
> people use.
>

Yeah... not to sure how we'd help Bruce with his LaTeX slides :)

--
Jonah H. Harris, Senior DBA
myYearbook.com