Aral Balkan

I'm sitting at the WeWorkForThem session at OFFF, which started an hour late due to technical issues. In fact, the poor presenter is currently talking without any of his materials because they couldn't transfer his screen to the projector. Unfortunately, it hasn't been a one-time thing either: they've been struggling with the projectors and laptops (both Mac and PC) throughout the day. Truly, for a professional conference, this is unacceptable. This is what tech rehearsals are for! Unfortunately, the only conference I know of that does tech rehearsals is Flash Forward and, I have to say, that the difference is night and day. (Go, FlashForward!) :)

I really feel for the guy as I had to go through a similar thing during my talk in MXDU and it's not fair for the presenter or the audience. In short, please, conference organizers, fly out your speakers a day early and make sure you do tech rehearsals with all speakers prior to the actual event. Your audiences don't deserve to sit listening to apologies for something that is entirely preventable.

Comments

• I totally agree, the projector problems have been a constant from the very beginning. Audience can laugh about it once, but it is really annoying to see the same problem in each and every talk. I was quite surprised when OFFF staff said something was wrong with Craig Swann's computer. Craig repeated "No es mi ordenador" ("It's not my computer") a couple of times to make clear it was NOT his computer's fault (obviously it wasn't). I just hope these guys work hard tonight to solve this before tomorrow.

  by Daniel on 2006-05-11 21:17:45