Re: PGCon 2008 RFP

gmr(at)myyearbook(dot)com ("Gavin M. Roy") writes:
> 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.

I'll suggest different "prime value" to this sort of
standardization...

Standardizing formats means that you *might* more readily be able to
produce a single, somewhat-uniform-looking, document combining all the
material together.

Conference proceedings are the more typical example of attempts to
"standardize format;" having common format means that they can publish
*THAT* as a "book" and not have it look like a dog's breakfast.

The PostgreSQL-related conferences aren't formal enough for that sort
of imposition to seem at all reasonable. We're generally not in the
sort of academic "publish-or-perish" peril that would force the
presenters to go to that particular sort of effort.

I would suggest that, for our purposes, there is a value in NOT
attempting standardization, namely that we haven't anything resembling
the degree of infrastructure required to support production of a
sufficiently "all-encompassing" standardized format.

We don't (yet ;-)) have in-place upgrades beteween versions; I'd
*much* rather that "systematizing efforts" went into that.

If we had someone around that was a graphic arts "guru" who wanted to
put together some nice looking PowerPoint/Keynote/OOImpress templates,
I don't imagine anyone would say "Don't do it!" But I don't think
it's worth looking *hard* for that, or in trying to impose burdens
surrounding this on presenters.

I don't believe that a lack of "collateral matching" is our largest
problem :-).
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