[Linux-aus] Re: A/V recordings and publishing

[Mary Gardiner <mary@puzzling.org>]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007, Ken Wilson wrote:
> With a speaker that is used to repeating questions this works well, but 
> many speakers have not yet learnt this, maybe prompting would help, but 
> in small theatres where all people can hear the floor question it is 
> counter intuitive to repeat the question for the recording.

You'd be surprised how often the audience does not, in fact, hear the
question properly, especially when asked by anyone who does not have a
loud clear relatively deep voice that has the local accent (that is, up
to about 50% of questions, especially at a conference with many
international attendees). It takes several sentences to properly
calibrate to a voice you haven't heard before, particularly if it is
accented in a way you haven't heard much in the last little while and
most of the audience, unlike the speaker, does not have the advantage of
having the asker face them directly.

As an audience member I really really like having the speaker repeat the
question, mostly for this reason and also because since they nearly
always paraphrase it, so you can hear what question they are *actually*
going to answer (not always the same one that was asked!)

-Mary