[CLUE-Adm] Speaker Guidelines

Lynn Danielson lynnd at techangle.com
Tue Feb 19 17:45:44 MST 2002


A very good point about poor audience ettiquette.  To be
more blunt -- rudeness.

You're absolutely right.  I've seen this happen on several
ocassions and I've done nothing.  I Simply watched and let
the speaker fend for himself as best he could.

For the most part I think we tend to draw a friendly crowd.
But even with the best intentions, interruptions can become
disruptive and embarrasing.  And occasionally the comments
have been less then friendly.

I'm afriad that I may personally be contributing to this
problem by making my own share of unsolicited comments and
fostering a causal environment.  Perhaps we need to make an
effort to make the environment more formal.

I want to do my part to help.  I pledge to try.  But I'd
also like some support.  I have little doubt Jeff will jump
in when necessary.  But I'm basically a wallflower who's
afraid to offend anybody.  So, I'm going to need to prepare
myself with some tactics for dealing with this.  If anybody
on the list has suggestions for how to handle the situations
Dave's mentioned (some assertively worded comments perhaps?)
please speak up.

 > ... someone in the audience ... gives a 5 minute statement about
 > how the presenter is:
 >
 >  - Not addressing the topic the way they fell it should be
 >    addressed. (Depth of expertise, introduction)
 >  - Not covering what they feel needs to be covered.  (I.e. 'I
 >    know that we are discussing HTML and how to build a web page,
 >    but I want to know how to get my PHP script to properly read
 >    the session variables as determined by the value of the cookie
 >    I set during the last session using perl?')
 >  - 'I do it this way and so should you.'

One thought that comes to mind is to try preempting the problem
by making a request to the audience before (or while) introducing
the speaker, asking the audience to show respect for the speaker,
and to hold their questions and comments until the end of the
presentation.  Again, any suggestions for how to word such a
statment would be appreciated.

Lynn





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