It was a dammed cold day if you´d ask me..:) Organizing this unique conference and having it in the basement of the Veletržní palác is one thing, but making attendants feel cosy is another. My whole body started freezing shortly after a the first guest speaker - Richard Seymour - begun his speech. And I tend to be okay all the time, even when people around me start grumbling about temperature...But anyway, the staff saved the day by installing at least a few provisional heaters later on. So that one could fully concentrate on all the interesting and sometimes provocative thoughts that were emerging out of the individual presentations.
For me, Richard Seymour´s was probably the best one. He perfectly worked with the audience, he was very funny and entertaining, and he always made his points very clear. Same applies I´d say for John Kearon who was speaking about ideas, creativity, and new ways of using internet for market research.
Greg Rowland on semiotics was less persuasive. The way he prepared his presentation was perhaps too complex and difficult to follow. Same old mistakes such as too much text, no bulletpoints, not much in terms of the audience involvement. Josef Havelka, sitting right next to me, fired off some harsh comments about one particular project Greg had used in his presentation, but Greg´s reaction were not really persuasive and left the audience really puzzled.
The last speaker - Matt Hart - was kind of a disappointment for me. Several people to whom I spoke to after the conference, expressed pretty much the same opinion. It´s a bit hard to explain what Matt´s speach was actually about because, to be perfectly honest, I don´t have a clue. Maybe going through his presentation would help me in this.
Speaking about presentations - you may find 3 out of 4 of them here. The missing one should become downloadable soon.
One last general remmark on the speaker´s qualities... Guys, I really don´t know why is that...ok, I have a good surmise for why is that :) ...but when it comes to comparing English (native English) speakers and Czech speakres, gosh, I can´t help myself but to feel really badly about that... It´s a totally different league. In fact it´s not the same sport at all... Ruth Arban, my Czech/Canadian colleague from our agency, who accompanied me during the conference, made a comment about it right after the very first presentation (of Richard Seymour). So we had quite a debate about it.
What about you? Does anybody has some good experience with Czech speakers? Let´s share it!
TG
