
How not to ask questions at a conference - kevinburke
http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/how-not-to-ask-questions-at-conference/
======
tjoff
_> But I was also pretty appalled at the question asking at the end of each
talk._

Almost without exception I've always felt like this. It is often downright
embarrassing to witness how the speaker has to stay interested and answer
irrelevant or extremely niche questions in front of an audience. It is so bad
that I really wonder why anyone, audience or speakers, would ever want to have
an Q:A after a talk. Yes it can of course be frustrating if the speaker
omitted something important or just should clarify something but even in those
cases it is seldom the case that such issues would even surface during an Q:A.

Yes, an Q:A with insightful questions could spark a really interesting
discussion and really take the whole talk to the next level - but that is so
seldom the case that it just can't be worth it, yet everyone insists on these
Q:As.

~~~
jamesbritt
_It is often downright embarrassing to witness how the speaker has to stay
interested and answer irrelevant or extremely niche questions in front of an
audience._

The speaker has no such obligation.

The speaker should consider the audience at large and politely defer niche or
obtuse or self-serving questions.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Though I personally feel this would be perfectly acceptable, the speaker might
come off sounding like a jerk to some people.

I suggest the moderator "take the bullet" and make a statement similar to this
blog and cut out questions that don't follow the rules.

~~~
jamesbritt
Yeah, having a "designated asshole" to keep things rolling is a big help.
Sadly, it's not always arranged.

~~~
Protonk
A designated asshole is nearly mandatory, especially for mixed technical
audiences and issues where someone can have an [opinion on the bike
shed](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_Law_of_Triviality>). Most
people can't fill this role because they don't like conflict or have a
reputation to protect (real or imaginary) but conferences should always assign
a moderator to play the jerk.

~~~
bm1362
I know this might be off topic, but did you just try to use Markdown?

~~~
MichaelApproved
That's how you link on Reddit. Maybe he thought it worked the same way here.

------
mkramlich
I agree with most everything the author said. But I'll add one thing: the
secret or no-so-secret main point to a conference _is_ promotion. The speakers
are there to promote themselves. The attendees. The folks running it. The
sponsors. Everybody. Okay, nearly everybody. Because if the real goal was what
people claimed it to be, ostensibly, like "education" or "sharing ideas",
etc., then there are generally easier, cheaper, faster, more straightforward
ways of accomplishing those goals without involving a conference. (Like maybe
using this thing called the Internet.) What conferences are good for, mainly,
is face time, a change of scenery, an opportunity to press palms, to party, to
travel as a business expense, etc.

I think it was telling that he admitted it was the first conference he'd ever
been to. (And I'm not knocking his observations or recommendations: I think
they are accurate and desirable!) Because for those who've seen a lot of them
over the years, that whole self-promotion pattern is an old and recurring
theme.

Also, promotion is unpleasant but it's generally better than writing resumes,
filling out applications, going through an interview process, HR, the
submission and patronization, etc. Better if people just know who you are,
come get you, throw work and money in your face. Promotion gets you that.

~~~
chives
I think the key connection that you and the author are missing, is that
conferences are also about networking. Yes, there is certainly promotion going
on, but more than that or additionally to that, people who go to conferences
want to network. While I certainly agree on some of the points the author
makes, part of the reason why the question asker is specific and uses common
lingo (in the case of uncommon I agree with the author) is to give himself
credibility. Which is important if you are going to pull aside the speaker
afterword and talk to him, possibly exchange business cards, maybe ask him to
lunch, and ultimately find him on LinkedIn. As during the final step of
networking, Question Asker A, wants Speaker B to remember who he was and add
him to his virtual network.

Which is ultimately a hell of a lot more useful then pretending as OP said to
be there solely for "education" or "sharing ideas." Not trying to discount
what OP said, but point to something valuable being overlooked.

------
cperciva
_Ask a question, don't make a comment_

This depends on the nature of the talk. I've attended many talks which have
included "and there's also this possibility we haven't explored in detail"
where speakers have been very overjoyed to have someone stand up and say "we
looked at that possibility, and found that it didn't work."

------
wallflower
If you truly want to practice your public speaking skills, one of the best
ways to practice is to go to a non-technical public forum with an audience (a
public lecture with Q&A - NOT a local government meeting) and try to say
something (it helps if you have passion/conviction on what you are saying) in
a concise yet convincing matter.

Toastmasters also rocks. I got my CTM years ago - advice is to find a club
that is not affiliated with your workplace or anyone you really know (more
freedom to fail without feeling self conscious)

~~~
dhimes
Oh God, please no. I mean, if you genuinely have something to relevant to
contribute or share, then by all means. But please don't take up our time just
so you can practice. There are better ways (Toastmasters, for instance) and we
are trying to get stuff done in somewhat limited time.

~~~
mikescar
Agreed, check out Toastmasters. They have schedules built around working
9-5ers and you'll get better feedback than public officials could possibly
offer.

No need to waste anyone's time on the public dime so you can practice talking
to people.

------
leif
I disagree. It is not a burden on the audience to ask good questions, it is
one on the speaker to deliver a talk that _elicits_ good questions.

Talks are short, you can't cover everything. If you've addressed the audience
appropriately, they should understand what you told them, and you should have
given them the tools to look deeper into your topic. The perfect way to look
deeper after a talk is to ask an expert (you!) right now. If you've made the
talk interesting, they'll of course be genuinely interested and want to know
more. So a good talk = good questions.

I judge every talk I give by the questions that are asked afterward:

If there are no questions, I gave a bad talk.

If they're pity questions (something superficial or off topic---"how does this
apply to <my favorite foobar nobody else uses>" are typical), I gave a bad
talk.

If they're questions about something I actually did cover, then either the
asker is a moron or a pendant, or I did a bad job on that section (something
that's easy to detect by watching the reactions of the rest of the audience).

If they're questions about something I glossed over on purpose, or they're
about open problems or otherwise really make me think, I walk out happy.

As an audience member, your only job is to attend talks you think you might be
interested in, and to relax. Your natural reaction will be a reflection on the
quality of the speaker, and if you find yourself asking good questions,
congratulations, you just saw a great talk.

 _NB: This applies equally to promotional and academic talks._

~~~
goostavos
I've been part of the conference 'industry' for about three years. I generally
attend about 20-25 conferences per year covering a variety of disciplines from
software, to medical, to business. It is from this experience that I must
unfortunately disagree with your view point :)

Regardless of the quality of talk, you can't escape a couple of people with
"that guy" syndrome. Some people just can't sit still without making their
opinions heard. Buzzword bingo from the article is a good example. There's
often a king-nerd who need everyone in the room to know that he too is also
smart, so he starts dropping stupid buzz words only marginally related to the
topic.

I've seen people go up to the microphone just to give book suggestions to the
speakers. "Oh, you like the subject that you presented about? I _too_ know
about this subject. I read books."

It's all veeeeeery painful to endure. So, in short, I wouldn't judge your
talks by whether or not you get a couple of dumb questions.

~~~
leif
These people exist, but they are outliers, and you can detect and discount
them. If you're getting good questions, yes, you'll get a couple of these guys
no matter what, but the rest of the audience will react to them for you.

------
paulsutter
Great article. Really like the Google Moderator idea as a deterministic way to
eliminate blowhards and improve the value of conference sessions.

Has anyone seen it used for this purpose? Any other tools like this? It's an
interesting mobile app challenge.

~~~
vibrunazo
Google uses Google Moderator very frequently. IO questions are filtered with
it. The Android team makes public hangouts every week and answer questions
filtered by moderator. I've even been in a dart hackaton where the creators of
dart would answer questions filtered by moderator.

I don't think I've ever seen a bad question embarrassing the speaker after
being filtered by moderator. The closest to that is sometimes the speaker will
just skip the question. Since it's much more impersonal, it doesn't feel rude.

------
hammock
For a guy who's only been to one conference, this a fantastic list.
Interesting interplay that I noticed:

a) _Ask questions that you believe would be relevant to at least a third of
the people in the room._ and b) _If you wouldn't ask the question without a
room full of people present, then don't ask._

are not mutually exclusive, but do tend to whittle your potential questions
down to a small set of very good ones.

~~~
kevinburke
Thanks! I started noticing and thinking about question asking a lot more
during academic talks while I was in college. It's fair to say I hate bad
questions :)

------
happadrippi
And since many questions are rambly or inaudible, if you are the speaker:
briefly repeat or summarize the question before answering. If the question can
be tweaked to a better one then this is an opportunity to do so.

------
alister
There's an obvious solution: Get people to write down their questions on paper
from which the speaker can select questions that are of general interest and
to which he has a useful or interesting reply. To keep some excitement, you
can even get the audience member to ask his question at the microphone (with
the understanding that he has to ask the question he composed on paper).

I'll grant you that this wouldn't be appropriate for every kind of Q and A.
Unwelcome questions would be suppressed in the White House briefing room, for
example. But it should be fine for _technical_ conferences.

The idea seems so obvious (and beneficial) that I'm wondering why nobody does
it -- at least at any conference I've been to.

~~~
wpietri
The Long Now Foundation does this at their monthly lecture series:

<http://longnow.org/seminars/>

Everybody gets a question card as they walk in. At any point you can fill it
out and pass it down for collection by volunteers. Somebody sorts them and
hands them over to the moderator (usually Stewart Brand) who, at the end of
the talk, sits down for a Q&A with the speaker.

It works really well. The moderator asks a mix of audience questions and
follow-ups, plus asks a few questions of his own.

I strongly recommend the series. In person if you're in SF, and otherwise via
podcast.

------
forza
I guess I'm damaged from working in agile projects for too long. But whenever
someone starts rambling in a large group I can't help thinking about how many
man-hours were just lost.

------
justinph
Conversely, I've been at plenty of talks (not always tech) where there haven't
been any questions, and that's awkward.

Sometimes dumb questions are better than none.

------
mcantor
It would be rad if conferences hyped these guidelines before talks. I bet at
least a few people would get the hint.

------
TheBoff
Really agree with "Ask a question, don't make a comment."

I was part of the audience for a Peter Molyneux talk recently, and half the
questions just seemed to be statements. Was just thinking, what's a good
answer to that?

------
RyanMcGreal
On the other hand, for many people this is their only opportunity to speak
publicly and _be heard_ , and question moderation has to remain sensitive to
this.

~~~
redthrowaway
Why? Why should the organizers care about the audience members' desire to "be
heard"? Having something to say and saying something worth listening to are
not synonymous. The organizers' chief concern is putting on a good event. That
requires having interesting talks with interesting questions. It does not
require giving every Tom, Dick, and Harry a soapbox with which to draw
attention to themselves.

------
zaptheimpaler
The 'designated asshole' idea works well only if the asshole in question has
enough knowledge to recognize whether a question is relevant or not. Given the
vast amount of knowledge it takes to differentiate a good question from a bad
one (i.e recognize 'buzzword bingo' vs a real question), it would be very
difficult (or prohibitively expensive at least) to find someone for the job.

That said, solutions like Google Moderator seem promising.

~~~
JadeNB
> The 'designated asshole' idea works well only if the asshole in question has
> enough knowledge to recognize whether a question is relevant or not.

I've never been to a programming or computer-science conference, but, at
mathematics conferences, moderator duties tend to rotate among the attendees.
This means that, while they may not be specialist content experts, they can at
least separate the wheat from the chaff. Is this feasible at conferences of
the sort the author describes? (It may not be; aside from the big
international workshops, mathematics conferences tend to be much smaller
affairs.)

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I don't think the speakers themselves would want to play the role of
'designated asshole'. After all, the problems with this are largely the same
as the ones with having the current speaker cut off bad questions - they need
to be polite as speakers.

As you said, I think this works better in mathematical conferences and
academic scenarios because people must be willing to accept objective
criticism of their ideas.

------
randomStuff
How else am I suppose to promote my poorly conceived idea for a startup,
without making a comment in the form of a question?

Conferences are supposed to be as much about gaining wisdom as imparting
wisdom. Clearly the question part of a talk is the correct form for this two
way transfer of wisdom.

------
brownbat
As to Shreve's question about pushing back if you sense a dodge, keep in mind
that there are sharply diminishing returns for each new followup.

Some guidelines I like:

1) Provide as many additional details the speaker explicitly requests.

2) If you think the speaker unwittingly misunderstood your question, clarify
once and briefly. If that fails, it's a sign. Let it go for now.

3) If the speaker's response missed one of the 99 caveats you think are
important, smile, sit down and consider drafting a letter.

Socratic conversations can be great ways to explore an issue, but they don't
work while one party is on stage. You definitely shouldn't try to convert
someone who is on stage. One followup should be all you ever need in this
format. If you need more than one, you really just need a different setting.

------
michael_nielsen
Organizers can do a lot to improve the quality of Q&A. A clever hack used by
the Long Now Foundation for their Long Now talks is to ask audience members to
write their question down on paper, and pass the paper to the front. The best
questions are then read out.

This has many effects. It eliminates long-winded and meandering questions. It
also eliminates questions primarily intended to puff up the questioner.
Unfortunately, this latter category is probably the majority of questions at
tech conferences I've been too.

The result is that Q&A is often as good or better than the talk, and may
continue for 45 minutes. At many events this would be torture; at the Long Now
talks it's a pleasure.

------
pudakai
I think the guidance in this should also apply to "how not to make comments on
Hacker News"

~~~
sharjeel
I complete agree! :D

------
iblaine
Should add to this list, don't use asking questions for the sole purpose of
promoting your company.

Nothing worse than Hi, I'm <name> from <company> and I would like to know
<trivial question>.

------
lien
There are no wrong questions asked at a conference. Everyone is there to
learn. I stopped reading the rest of the blog because I found the first bullet
point annoying: "Only ask a question relevant to 2/3 of the audience." People
can ask what they want. Who are you to say that their asking a specialized
question is their way of "showing off"? Get over yourself!

------
brownbat
Why don't all talks just have a private(/public) comment thread?

People could contribute to the discussion on the spot using whatever personal
electronic device they like. The speaker could quickly address anything that
was confusing, and also compose a more careful response to the deeper, more
complicated issues.

------
Tycho
A lot of the time though there are no questions whatsoever, in which case I
figure it's kind of better if somebody says something, anything, as long as
it's not totally obnoxious.

------
46Bit
Related: asking questions that whilst widely applicable require a lot of
detail for a worthwhile answer. Nobody can read your mind.

------
wilfra
Good list. Another big one: Don't preface your question with a thirty second
ramble about you and your background/career/company...nobody cares.

~~~
lnguyen
Those people aren't after an answer. They want the captive audience.

------
goggles99
You actually expect social Etiquette at geek camp?

Seriously, these are adults attending these conferences. Trust me, if they are
doing things like this - they will never "get it" socially. Thus - this is
nothing but a pointless rant.

~~~
sp332
I don't think I can write a HN-worthy response to this. I'm really just
disappointed and a little offended. Socially inept people are not beyond help.
Giving up on them, and encouraging everyone else to treat them as hopeless
cases, is not constructive and can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Most social conventions are not innate. Everyone has to learn them at some
point. Some are just later than others.

------
jvoorhis
It's worth remembering the Golden Rule before addressing a room.

