A RhetNet SnapShot Reply:
Fatigued Fannies

I guess Mike is wanting some other presentation format to replace paper reading at conferences. He compares the "fanny-fatiguing" conference sessions with the "multi-logue" of on-line formats, and I guess he want something similar to the online format to replace the current format.

There are such sessions now, like panels that have speakers who are alotted just a few minutes to state positions, to abstract a longer paper, there are roundtables. There are sessions where many voices are heard.

But I don't think this is what Mike wants. Otherwise he would not advocate a change to a format he doesn't describe. Yet I think that if we shift the focus from a particular moment of a conference to the whole conference we come to a format that Mike likes. It is the whole conference that is the multi-logue. Sure, this or that paper or this or that session might be fanny-fatiguing, just as this or that post (perhaps this one!) is too. But if we pull our focus back, if we look at the whole conference, all the sessions, all the different kind of sessions, all the gets-together in bars and restaurants, if we look at the *conference* then maybe we have a different perspective.