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TAMLondon 2010 remarks and comments – Part 3 of n

Date: 2010-10-21 00:30
Author: Stefano
category:Meetings, Opinion
slug:tamlondon-2010-remarks-and-comments-%e2%80%93-part-3-of-n

This post continues my review on TAMLondon 2010. I will go into details of the audience and the talks, and memorable quotes. I keep the individual talks for the last post, due tomorrow.

The audience: with an audience reaching one thousand delegates (more than twice the first edition), question time was in some cases limited, but the questions intriguing. Approximately half of the delegates were Brits, the other half from the rest of Europe. A thumb-statistics survey from chitchat and nametag-gazing would indicate strong presence of Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Norway in particular. Some delegates were also from Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland. Strongly underrepresented Italy, with only a very cheerful and pleasant lady I met in the last minutes of the meeting, and of course myself. Around 60 % of the audience was male. The average age was around 30, ranging from 15 to over 60. Concerning the profession, I heard about tourist operators, managers, box manufacturers, computer programmers, students and academics, but my sample is very limited in size.

The speakers and the talks: a very broad set of presentation styles was available. Most speakers preferred a freestyle speech with a minimal number of slides. I reckon a maximum of four or five slides in talks using them. The speakers were in any case incredibly good in keeping the audience interested in every detail, even when no supporting slides were present.

Interviews were definitely over-represented. In comparison, I don't recall any interview from last year's TAM. As I previously said, I think this introduced some occasional yawn, but I don't want to give the impression they were boring. It's a matter of rhythm.

Memorable quotes

  • "The Internet is creating people who wouldn't be able to create the Internet" - Graham Linehan
  • "Be the best dick you can be!" - P. Z. Myers
  • "Common Sense. So rare it's a super power." - Unknown
  • "Scientists don’t have the whole truth, but a path to the truth" - P. Z. Myers
  • "we need mythology and symbology, as long as we don't confuse it with reality" - Alan Moore
  • “Facebook is where you lie to your friends, Twitter is where you’re honest to strangers” – Graham Linehan
  • "If more of our political masters understood statistics, the world would be a better place." - Richard Dawkins
  • "The nerds shall inherit the earth" - Ben Goldacre
  • "Tough mind and tender heart is the right recipe" - D. J. Grothe
  • "Science is humility before the facts" - Stephen Fry
  • “Yesterday’s pirates are today’s admirals” - Cory Doctorow