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> We had strict union regulations Can you clarify what this means? In my experience it means paying for more audio, video, and venue staff because the existin

> We had strict union regulations Can you clarify what this means? In my experience it means paying for more audio, video, and venue staff because the existing folks have been on duty all day but the conference organizers don’t want to pay or can’t afford to pay for a) more people or b) overtime I’ve done a bit of mix engineering and conference organizers are very myopic: why can’t I be as excited about their stuff as they are? They don’t think about what happens when this is your day job and if you don’t bring the hammer down you’ll end up working unpaid overtime every day of every week because every conference thinks they are the hottest most exciting shit since sliced bread. One can assume Google is able to pay more but made the perfectly reasonable business decision not to. The mystery for me is why you’re blaming it on the union? Perhaps the venue completely prohibits longer days but every rate sheet I’ve ever seen simply quotes higher prices if you exceed a “normal” conference day length. (I’m genuinely curious here but also being slightly sensitive: there are certainly abusive unions - Philly conference centers come to mind where you have to pay master electricians to carry tables and chairs into the venue - but it is far more common for people to be cheap-asses & blame the unions)

kinlan 9y ago
I'm not blaming the union if it came out that way it wasn't intentional. I had to work around a number of constraints, with timings based on regulations as well as rates, budget constraints and other factors that came in at the last minute, as well as people on our sides own ability to work the long hours and I chose to balance of them all and it meant having talks at 30 minutes and the breaks based around all these factor.... I mean, I am happy with the content and the pace and the quality of the work from everyone involved especially the event crew. It's just a factor how we chose to run the event and the content and that is what I was trying to articulate.
- xenadu02 9y ago
  That makes sense; as I said there are perfectly valid business (or other) reasons to limit the length of each day. FWTW: I don’t see a problem with shorter sessions.

kinlan 9y ago

I'm not blaming the union if it came out that way it wasn't intentional. I had to work around a number of constraints, with timings based on regulations as well as rates, budget constraints and other factors that came in at the last minute, as well as people on our sides own ability to work the long hours and I chose to balance of them all and it meant having talks at 30 minutes and the breaks based around all these factor.... I mean, I am happy with the content and the pace and the quality of the work from everyone involved especially the event crew. It's just a factor how we chose to run the event and the content and that is what I was trying to articulate.

xenadu02 9y ago
That makes sense; as I said there are perfectly valid business (or other) reasons to limit the length of each day. FWTW: I don’t see a problem with shorter sessions.