To Be Titled

Henry Farrell draws some obvious contrasts between Ignite conferences and APSA (American Political Science Association) conferences:

Ignite gives you precisely (and only) five minutes to speak - your Powerpoint/Keynote or similar presentation has 20 slides that advance inexorably every fifteen seconds. What’s nice about it is that it forces people to cut to the chase.

I’ve only recently found out about Ignite. It seems to be a great way to share knowledge and experience within communities, and I hope to participate at some point in the future. Farrell continues:

I don’t think I have ever seen a conference presentation at APSA that couldn’t have been improved by being cut down to five minutes with inexorable advance, requirement for advance planning over what you actually want to say and so on.

I think the APSA presentations I have seen recently are a lot better than the ones I saw in previous years. (I may simply be doing a better job of choosing panels with better presenters.) But I still see some horrible presentations as well. Presenters should not have more than 5-6 slides for a 12-minute presentation. Ignite format for APSA would be interesting.