Interesting observations about some practical aspects of making a conference successful. Not having breaks is a tough one. - Martin Fenner

Not having breaks is a tough one. For one thing, it forces people to take bathroom or refreshment breaks during the session and once you have people leaving the room during the sessions it becomes "okay" to leave. Before you know it people will leave the room for almost any reason and the audience starts to check out a bit - once the focus is broken it is really lost. We spent *a lot* of time discussing schedule and breaks and psychology of group focus when we were planning Sage Congress. - Lisa Green

Lisa, that makes a lot of sense. Not having breaks not only reduces the overall focus of sessions. The discussions in small groups between sessions for me are a very important reason to go to meetings. - Martin Fenner

The not having breaks was really really unfortunate. It not only creates some direct challenges but it means that people don't have time to talk. I was the one who kind of forced the break when there was supposed to be a panel discussion on day 1 . I know the panel would have been interesting. I did not think they would cancel the panel when I insisted on a break. But they were going to run through lunch and past without having had a single break all day. It was not good. I tried to suggest that they adapt and make the rest of the talks and sessions shorter but in the end I guess they just cancelled the panel. - Jonathan Eisen

Jonathan - so you are the culprit who canceled the panel I was on ! :) - Jean-Claude Bradley from Android

Sorry - did not realize it would be fully canceled. But a meeting w/o interaction might as well be a blog post. - Jonathan Eisen

I don't think it was Jonathan's fault they cancelled it. And it was Crazy to make a schedule that went from six hours without a break so I understand why he spoke up. Who could have guessed that the guy would cancel the panel? That was CRAZY and I certainly would not have predicted it would happen if someone asked for a break. - Lisa Green

Strongly agree on Martin's point "The discussions in small groups between sessions for me are a very important reason to go to meetings" and Jonathan's point "But a meeting w/o interaction might as well be a blog post." - Lisa Green

Essentially the panel cancellation was my fault. There was a combination of people being exhausted as Jon points out but I think it wasn't clear that some of us were going to have to leave soon after. In retrospect I should probably have suggested that we do it after 30 minutes or in a smaller scale informal way. - Cameron Neylon from twhirl

Cameron - I think the fault is with the original schedule more than anything else. Lack of breaks is to blame and scheduling SciFoo people in the afternoon is also to blame. Your group could have been scheduled at 11am, giving you more of a time buffer for getting to Mountain View for SciFoo. - Lisa Green

I'm just teasing a bit - but it was weird how that played out. Even if there are no questions it is useful to get a recording after taking the time to travel - Jean-Claude Bradley from Android

A separate point is the I-House auditorium is better suited for entertainment than presentations requiring focused attention. I know there are summer sessions going on, but I would still think a proper venue with tiered seating might have been available. Not to detract from the overall fact that having such a conference was great, and I enjoyed the talks I saw. - Ruchira S. Datta from Android

As someone who had stayed inside all day here in Oregon in order to hear Cameron, Jean-Claude, Victoria Stodden et al via the live steam it was a major bummer it was dropped. I had told all kinds of librarian professional groups about that session and the fact that it was dropped was quite distressing. - Hope Leman