Virtual Panel
I was a participant yesterday (Wednesday September 16) in a panel at the EETimes SoC Virtual Conference, on the Economics of Next-Generation SoC Design: A node too far?. This was an interesting comparison point to the first online conference I was part of in 2002, the SoC Online conference. The technology worked better (as one would hope after 7 years!) although it appears not perfectly for all attendees, as Lou Covey writes. I have been extremely busy of late and could not attend all the sessions that I wanted to, although I listened in to most of the keynotes by Rajeev Madhavan and Gerry Gaffney.
The panel discussion was well organised, well moderated by Dylan McGrath and it was a pleasure to participate along with Sven Andersson of Realtime Embedded AB, Ron Collett of Numetrics and Steve Douglass of Xilinx. Monitoring the attendees, I noticed a peak attendance of about 130 (not bad considering this was from 5-6 Eastern Time, 2-3 Pacific Time, and the last session of the virtual conference). There were also 5-6 user questions and some good discussion.
I think the format is an interesting one to keep experimenting with, as I noted after watching the EETImes Virtual Conference on Multicore in June. The parts that work best are keynotes and talks which are essentially webinars, which work pretty well; and the panel format which uses the same technology to push slides and audio and get audience questions. We’ll have to see what the eventual role of these virtual events settles down to be. Unlike Lou Covey, and some of the people he was virtually chatting to, I have found value in webinars – although I try to be pretty selective.
3 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
September 22nd, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
Grant, just to clarify, the people I was talking with were the same people who could not get into your panel session or any of the sessions in the auditorium. The comments on webinars were regarding those being run in the exhibits area that were strictly focused on a single company or technology. No one was making any criticism of the event content, just the exhibits.
Also, I was able to get into the auditorium two days after the event and catch up on what had happened and found quite a bit worth listening too.
The point I was making, based on the conversation I had with those of us “out in the cold” was that what passes for valuable content in exhibit booths is not well regarded by the people it is supposed to be reaching. What they DID find valuable was the one-on-one experience in the booths.
September 22nd, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
Lou
Thanks for the clarification. A keynote in a virtual conference is really like a webinar, in form, but of course, as you point out, the content of a keynote or technical talk may differ from a webinar in a virtual exhibit booth.
I was more concerned about the comment that you and others couldn’t get the technology to work so that you could see the sessions being run in the virtual auditorium. Reminds me of the problems of the early virtual conferences 7 or 8 years ago. Hopefully the technical people involved can fix that for next time, because as you confirmed, what happens on the virtual conference side (the auditorium) contains a lot of useful content and it is a shame if the technology doesn’t work for all. At least via the archive, you could catch up later – but more fun if everyone can participate live.
Thanks again
Grant
September 23rd, 2009 @ 7:47 pm
Grant – I had no connection problems, and I agree that the virtual format works pretty well for some things, although not being able to see the presenters felt a little disconnected. Still, the “economics” panel you were on was quite interesting. It appears we need better ways of predicting SoC development costs up front, as well as ways of reducing costs. This seems like an area that needs more attention, not to mention some quantifiable data that might help us understand what reduces costs and how.