The AusWeb team has since the inception of the AusWeb series of conferences, sought to bring together the best features of a face-to-face conference with the distributed community of the Web. This page sets out our rationale and some of the details of the management of the conference and the role of the presentation.
At AusWeb95 -- and less successfully at AusWeb96 and AusWeb97 -- we actively sought to change the discourse within the conference. We want to give the greatest ability of presenters and audience to interact in a lively and productive way. We want to give the audience in each formal session the greatest opportunity to ask questions, make statements and to debate. We know that we have had success when the audience takes over the debate informed by the contribution of the authors and the paper itself!
The AusWeb teams wants to provide plenty of opportunity for discussion, debate and Q&A. We do not want to repeat the standard format of the research conference, where the chair of the session says "ah, we have time for just one question!" in the last few minutes of the session.
The AusWeb team goes to great lengths to facilitate a high level of productivity in the formal f2f sessions. First, the papers are made available on the Web a month before the conference. For the first time at AusWeb99, the Australian delegates to the conference will receive the printed conference proceedings by courier a week or two before the conference. They can read the papers on the plane on the way to the conference. So participants should have worked out which papers they're going to attend and, at worst, skimmed or, at best, thoroughly read the papers.
We are also be presenters to provide an online presentation .. which might be (for example) a PowerPoint presentation using RealAudio's Real Presenter. It might be HTML .. it might be whatever your imagination runs to! The presentation would be on your server, as distinct from the papers which are on our server. There will be a prize of an Apple iMac computer graciously supplied by Apple Computer Australia for the best presentation.
The criteria for best presentation is shown below. The online presentation is designed to complement the formal paper published in the proceedings and to substitute for the usual 20 minutes or so for the presentation that is given in normal academic presentations at conferences. It is also designed to bring the spirit of the presentation of the paper to the wider Web audience. The presentation should bring the paper alive.
Each conference session will have both a Chairperson and a Moderator. The role of the Chairperson is to keep the session running on time. The role of the moderator is to provide an analysis and a commentary. The format of each session is as follows. First the Chair will open the session. The Chair will only introduce the speakers by name. All background information on the speakers is available on the Web. The paper presenters will then provide some context and an overview of the paper in no more than five minutes. They will not "present" the paper .. that is done in the formal paper proceedings and in the online presentation format. Both the Web and Microsoft PowerPoint will be available for this purpose. The Chair will be very strict in sticking to the six minute deadline .. every minute that a paper presenter takes over and above the five minutes is a minute taken away from the audience.
After the last speaker has presented, the moderator will sum up, analyse and review. This will take approximately 10 minutes. Moderators will be encouraged to talk to each presenter prior to the session.
The session will be then open for all the participants. This format worked very well in AusWeb95 .. partially, because of the more intimate scale of the conference. There was not a single session that did not have active discussion and debate. We want to return not only to the physical setting of AusWeb95 at the Ballina Beach Resort, but also the pattern of discourse of AusWeb95. We seek the co-operation of paper presenters, Chairpersons and moderators in this process.
The criteria for award of the prize for best presentation is as follows:
While authors are responible for the content of the presentation site they can, of course, recruit assistance to build the site. We are not assessing authors practical skills to actually build the presentation site.
The award will be made by a Selection Committee comprising:
The shortlisting of the sites for the Selection Committee will close on 17:00 AEST, Thursday 15 April. Please complete your site by then!
To the papers....