[wplug-plan] Problem with rude audience members at recent talks

Bobbie Eicher bobbie.eicher at gmail.com
Wed May 4 16:21:37 EDT 2005


I spoke to Bill Moran a bit about this since my last email on the
topic. so I want to throw in some clarifications on bits where it
seems I may not have been communicating quite as well as I thought.

So far as I'm concerned, within reason, it's always appropriate to ask
for clarification.  If you need a brief clarification, that should
come as close to the point where the confusion started as possible
because if you get lost 20 minutes into the talk you may have no hope
of properly understanding the rest of the talk.  Particularly in a
group with mixed levels of knowledge like WPLUG, sometimes a speaker
will just assume a higher level of base knowledge than most of us
really have, and a little bit of ongoing feedback about ACTUAL POINTS
OF CONFUSION is a good thing.

It is very good manners so far as I'm concerned to give visual
feedback that you're following the speaker (ie nodding and such). 
This actually came from a couple of high school science teachers that
I had, who once told me that they find it very frustrating when
there's no indication of whether the class is still with them or not. 
Since then I make an effort to at least do things like look directly
at the speaker periodically (if I'm looking away to take notes or look
up extra bits of info on what they've said or read along or whatever)
and nod and generally make it clear by body language that I'm still
with them.

Publically challenging a speaker is very rarely appropriate.  It does
occasionally happen, but I sorely doubt it'll ever happen in WPLUG. 
This kind of thing happens mostly in presentations of medical cases
and various kinds of research, where everyone in the room is expected
to be an expert and the speaker is either expected to prove that he
knows his stuff (defending graduate research for example) or it's
vitally important that everyone question and understand why every step
in the process was done the way it was (like a medical case review
where doctors are expected to learn from each other's cases) or you
have some kind of peer review of research going on where it's accepted
in advance that the structure of the presentation is to offer the
peers a chance to challenge the research.

So far as I'm concerned, the unfortunate reality of open source
focused groups (and perhaps computer focused groups in general) is
that they'll have a tendency to attract people who think they know a
lot and really know nearly nothing.  So people will show up to
speakers and hunt for any little thing they can disagree with as
publically as possible to prove that they're hot stuff even though in
many cases it really just shows that they missed the point entirely. 
We have a few  people in WPLUG who are really incredibly impressively
knowledgeable in their respective areas, and I have NEVER seen one of
them break on the speaker with a "haha you screwed up" attitude.  I've
occasionally seen them offer a correction/clarification during the
presentation if they'd been asked in advance to do so if they noticed
a problem, but otherwise in my experience they have always been
courteous enough to wait until afterward and approach the speaker
privately to clear up the confusion.

The "moral" of this rambling?  If it's not a request for clarification
and the speaker hasn't explicitly asked people to break in during
their presentations with comments, it's almost never a comment that's
actually worth hearing anyway (and I'm only saying *almost* never
because I'm assuming there must be some kind of exception, even though
I can't remember having seen any).

I absolutely support any rule that involves a variation on "don't
challenge the speaker's views during the presentation" and I'm
sincerely disgusted with the people who've been behaving so badly that
we'd actually have to tell them to behave with common courtesy.

- Bobbie




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