Hecklers (was Possible future talk; interest?)

[Marc Lanctot]

On 09-05-16 01:39 PM, Richard Weait wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 12:26 -0400, Meng Cheah wrote:
>> Richard Weait wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 15:53 -0400, James Knott wrote:
>>>
>>>> Talks at TLUG meetings tend to be "intermittent" because of all the
>>>> hecklers.  ;-)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Is the heckling one of the benefits of TLUG meetings?
>>>
>> I thought they were contributors to the talk :-)
>
> Heckling presenters at TLUG is mentioned once in a while on this list
> and during and after presentations.  I guesstimate that "attendee
> contributions" at TLUG are two to four times more frequent than the
> other dozen LUGs I've attended in the last year.
>
> Meng Cheah's smiley above, suggests that hecklers are not contributing
> to the talk.
>
> Would anybody like to discuss the place of heckling at TLUG meetings?
>
> Is the heckling one of the benefits of TLUG meetings?  Is it a sign of
> rapt attention and engagement in the presentation?  Is it a sign of
> respect for the speaker?  Is it a benefit to the LUG in general, to the
> attendee contributor, to the other attendees and to the speaker?
>

Richard et. al,

For what it's worth, here's my $0.02.

I found there was way too much heckling at Colin's talk on Linux in 
Games talk; this talk was dominated by the heckling. It was enough to 
deter me from wanting to ever give a talk.

The last talk I was at was the ICANN talk; and here it wasn't so much 
heckling as it was interruptions for correcting or adding to the 
speaker, which IMHO is just as distracting, especially when the points 
don't significantly affect the purpose of the talk (details, details).

I, regrettably, missed the last one.

So my personal opinion is that I would prefer to have the speaker give 
the talk with minimal heckling and then have the people who are 
interested in interaction/discussion stay at the end .. often it goes 
too late for me and I find that because I have to leave I end up only 
getting half of what I could out of the talk.

I should mention that I like that the talks are informal.. I just wish 
that a talk with 45-60 min of content didn't take 120 to deliver. I've 
got a commute.. after a day of work post 8:30-9 PM I'm sorry but you've 
lost my interest -- it's just a physical and mental inevitability.

Marc

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