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- 20 minute talks
- explicit workshop sessions on the last day
Connect 2016 introduced Interest and Working group f2f meetings on the last afternoon (pre-timetabled).
All these seemed well received but there are a small number of provisios:
- lightning talks should be no more than 7 minutes (some felt that the 10 minute ones were too long)
- the 'State of the HydraSphere' plenary needs mapping out beforehand so that all our message gets across; we need to remember that Connect is a recruiting exercise as well as a Partner meeting and we need to reach out to delegates who are "kicking the tyres".
- the first Connect failed to have a short plenary closing the conference (mainly due to lack of a suitable space); this was unfortunate because the end of the meeting just drifted. In In 2016 we deliberately avoided a closing meeting and just filled the rest of the timetable to bursting! That worked fine.
- the poster show and tell session turns out to be one of the most valued events of the week; it needs careful planning
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