[Inpycon] Some thoughts on talks

[Kenneth Gonsalves]

On Tue, 2010-09-28 at 12:36 +0530, Noufal Ibrahim wrote:
> > That was a euphemism. It is a shame to do so
> > for a national conference. They must be
> > blacklisted.
> 
> [...]
> 
> You're both a lot more gentle than I would be but I agree with the
> sentiment. However, it is possible that this will happen again in the
> future and we need to bulletproof ourselves against it. Getting their
> numbers and using the badge trick DAvid suggested are steps in that
> direction. 

one precaution we can take when accepting talks is to see where the
speaker is coming from. Many of them are deputed by their companies to
speak (usually to blow the company's trumpet). Take for example the talk
on openstreetmap. The person who was supposed to speak is unheard of in
OSM circles, and was probably deputed by mapquest to talk. He did not
turn up - disappointing quite a few people. I would have submitted a
similar talk but did not because I did not want to duplicate the effort.
I noticed some company deputed speakers who turned up in time for their
talk, spoke and left immedietally.   
-- 
regards
Kenneth Gonsalves