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Come find me in the hallway

Caleb Hearth on June 15, 2018

Many conferences and speakers build in time for audience questions during a talk. How often are those questions actually useful? How often do they ...
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Ben Halpern

The last time I gave a talk I spent the rest of the day giving impromptu tutorials on the subject. It was awesome.

BTW I should have found you in the hallway at Codeland!

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Caleb Hearth

That's amazing. One-on-one tutorials are great if you have time. Yeah, I saw you a few times but you seemed busy. Come to SPKR!

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Ben Halpern

I signed up for the mailing list 🙂

Feel free to hit me up on DEV Connect if there's any way I can help along the way. (Not to plug our own thing too hard but it's the best way to get a fast response from me 🙃)

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Weston Wedding • Edited

How often do you encounter push back on this idea? I feel as if I have, of late, been encountering people in conversations about the matter of Q&A sessions that seem to have this reverence for the Q&A process.

They spend a lot of time telling speakers that they're obligatory and often couch it in a naive thought process where Q&A sessions are just kumbaya-fests where no one judges a speaker for having trouble with a Q and that all Qs are beneficial.

Like, I've been an audience where people get upset with speakers (loudly muttering "F-cking lawyers", for instance) because the speaker didn't quite answer a question correctly due to not quite understanding the nuance of a question or the way it was worded. Even in a small meetup format (~12 people or so) things can get weird with awkwardly pointed or aggressive questioning.

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Andre Rubin

Depends on the conference. I've attended conferences where there were barely time to make from one session to the next if you had to change rooms. Then, if something was not clear during your talk, if there is no Q&A, then there will be no chance for me to catch you in the hallway.

My favorite conference, however, was one that each session of 30 minutes was followed by a 30-minute mingle time where hallway conversations were taking place.

Also, depends on what kind of questions. If a question is to clarify something presented during the talk, then asking that question on the Q&A session is appropriate, as others in the room might also have the same question. However, if I want to see how what you presented can be applied to my situation, then I should catch you in the hallway.

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Jan De Dobbeleer

I love this. Will definitely use it 👌🏻