vp:Session Chairs' Guide

From LinuxTag Public Wiki

The Session Chairs' Guide explains in detail how to create a great track for LinuxTag. It explains criteria for interesting talks, and walks through the tools available to find and manage speakers.

Great Tracks

A track is a sorted sequence of talks dedicated to one common subject. As a Session Chair you are in charge to compose your session that is more than a mere sequence of single talks. All these items are suggestions, not mandatory rules:

• Think about a meta story of your track. You may start with a general overview and progress to more specific aspects or implementation examples. You may want to close with an unexpected approach to the subject.

• More specific subjects are favourable over general subjects. Example: "Java VM monitoring" is more specific than just "Java".

• The talks should cover all important aspects of a subject.

• There is no need to exclude controversial subjects. After a whole day praising functional programming languages, a talk about "plain old C" might give a good contrast.

• Your talks should relate to Linux, Open Source, or Free Software in one sense or the other. There is no need for unreflected obiedience to those subjects, though.

• The very purpose for every talk is to entertain and educate the audience. Ask your speaker for the value of the talk for participiants.

• Try to find speakers, who are independent from each other. They should not all represent the very same project, nor should a majority work for a single employer.

• Having famous speakers at the conference is a plus, but no necessary requirement. The subject beats a high profile.

• It is ok to have talks for beginners, it is also ok to have presentations for experts on a subject, but don't mix them. Try to fit each talk into your track's story.

• Don't hesitate to suggest subjects to speakers. Usually you get better talks this way compared to accept whatever the speaker offers in the first place.

• It is not a requirement that a speaker presents a subject for the first time publically at LinuxTag, but it is a bonus.

• Some speakers go on tour with always the same talks. Try to avoid talks a speaker pulls readily prepared from his drawer, unless it's a very exciting subject.

Available Tools

The main tool to plan the LinuxTag conference program is the virtual conference center (vCC). For conference puposes, speakers enter their proposals into the web based application available at https://vcc.linuxtag.org/. Session chairs are able to select and review all proposals. The conference organizers

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