Re: Feedback from IETF 120 Vancouver post-meeting survey

[Warren Kumari <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Sep 09, 2024 at 12:16 PM, Bob Hinden <[e-mail]> wrote:

> HI,
>
> In 6MAN, we request that presenters submit a PDF file (with page numbers).
> If they don’t do that we reject it and ask them to resubmit.
>
> While we could convert or edit the file, the chairs have enough to do. It
> seems reasonsble to ask the presenters to follow our instructions.
>


To me, some of it is also a "Brown M&M" test -
https://www.candyfavorites.com/van-halen-and-brown-m-m-s

If presenters send me slides and they don't have slide numbers, I:
1: ask them to resubmit with slide numbers (I've run into too many "Oh,
when you saved the slides using whatever software you use, it broke the
[font|animations|perfect color matching] and now everything is your fault")
2: reach out and make sure that they have actually read the rest of the
instructions and practiced their presentation, etc…

Ok, the above isn't actually true — I intend to reach out and do the above,
but usually people who haven't included slide numbers are the same people
who finally email me slides once the meeting has already started, or hand
them to me on a thumb-drive with a USB-A connector, or…

Things like the above is why Geoff Huston has a standing "You can present
anything, anytime at IEPG meetings" -  he might send over a 467 page slide
deck, but if he says that it will be done in 10 minutes, I know that he'll
be done in 9:55, including questions. His slides will all have numbers,
they will be clear and legible, it will be interesting and on-topic, etc. I
might wildly disagree with the conclusion, but I know it will be a good
talk….

Yes, not everyone can present well, and this is especially true if you are
presenting in something other than your native language, but it really does
seem like everyone *should* be able to include slide numbers, submit a PDF,
practice the slides a few times, etc….

Sorry for the rant, I think I need more coffee…

W


> Bob
>
> On Sep 9, 2024, at 2:04 AM, Tero Kivinen <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Donald Eastlake writes:
>
> If someone provides PowerPoint without slides numbers, I usually just add
> slides numbers and tell them that I did that which is easier than going
> back and forth with them. 🙂
>
> I have had several cases where there libreoffice conversion from
> powerpoint to PDF has been broken, and as I have no idea what the slides
> should look like, so I might not notice that they are broken. Because of
> that, I will never try to do the conversion myself, I always ask authors to
> do the conversion, as they can then check the resulting PDF for conversion
> errors.
>
> I do not have access to powerpoint unless I boot my laptop to windows,
> which I do not want to do. On the other hand I have also seen issues with
> libreoffice generated pptx files when they have been opened using
> powerpoint to be broken, so only way to get conversion done properly is for
> the original author to do it on the system where he generated the slides in
> the first place.
> --
> [e-mail]
>
>