I love the idea of blind speaker selection in principle, but how do you then ensure you are selecting talks from people who are passably good at public speaking? You might get a really interesting outline submitted by someone who gives a really bad delivery or doesn’t bother to rehearse.
When the organizers of EAGxBerkeley 2022 were selecting lightning talks, they had prospective speakers send in slides, and then if those were good enough, give the presentation over a video call to someone who was responsible for reviewing all of them and selecting the best presentations. The first part of the process can be anonymized, but the second part can’t.
I love the idea of blind speaker selection in principle, but how do you then ensure you are selecting talks from people who are passably good at public speaking? You might get a really interesting outline submitted by someone who gives a really bad delivery or doesn’t bother to rehearse.
When the organizers of EAGxBerkeley 2022 were selecting lightning talks, they had prospective speakers send in slides, and then if those were good enough, give the presentation over a video call to someone who was responsible for reviewing all of them and selecting the best presentations. The first part of the process can be anonymized, but the second part can’t.