On Monday, June 25, we organize FAMOOSr 2007. The basic idea of FAMOOSr is to bring together the community around Moose and FAMIX, and to make collaborations possible based on shared implementation, analysis and data.

Putting the schedule together was quite a challenge. Originally, we thought we have 8h at our disposal, but in the end we found out we only have 5h30. In the same time, we wanted to give everyone a chance to let the others know what they are doing. The result is that we have two presentation sessions consisting of a total of 13 presentations of 5 and 7 minutes, and have breaks and discussion sessions in between.

5/7 minutes presentations!

We are used to have at least 10 minutes per presentation, and when we only have 10 minutes we tend to complain that there isn’t enough time. So, what do you do with a 5/7 minutes presentation?

Well, you can either say that you do not have enough time, or you can say that you have too much you want to show. It is a matter of choice, but I would chose the second one, given that you will not be granted more time.

The concept of blitz presentations is not new. For example, there is a whole conference called DEMO that features only such presentations. To give you an idea, you can watch the below movie with the best presentation from DEMO 2005. The movie shows the CEO of Homestead singing the presentation while doing the demo of their product called QuickSite.

Now, I do not want to suggest that you should sing your presentation, but I do want to point out some tips we thought of:

1. Decide on one point you want to emphasize. If you think you cannot decide on just one, try again. If that did not work, maybe you can try having two points if you have a 7 minutes presentations. The reviewers were asked to provide you with feedback regarding three points they would want to hear. Those should be good points to try focus on.
2. As opposed to other workshops, the goal of the presentation should not be not to explain all the details, but rather it should be to get your work known and get people curious enough. So, pick those points that will make people curious enough to ask for details afterwards.
3. You might be tempted to say that given that the presentation is short you will just figure it out on the spot. Please, do not. There is no replacement for rehearsal. Time yourself at least once before giving the presentation. There will be no extension to the time alloted to the presentation.
4. If you give a demo, please sit down because like this you are more effective with the mouse and keyboard.