Yesterday, Scott and I had a meeting arising out of our disagreement about a conference presentation on this blogging system. We cordially agreed to disagree, and Scott asked me to post my comments and opinions about this and related issues here. These are my feelings about conference presentations relating to our projects. They do not represent the position of the HCMC or anyone else.

• In the last couple of years, I think the balance between doing work and talking about work has become a bit skewed; we've done too much talking (in terms of meetings, presentations, conference travel etc.) and not enough actual useful work.
• We should make presentations only on substantial, innovative projects which are pretty much completed, and which we have good reason to be proud of. We shouldn't present on brand-new, half-finished, trivial, or "piloted" projects; we shouldn't present on promises or plans for what we might do when and if some grant money shows up, or on what we did to get some grant money. If we don't actually have any projects which meet these criteria, we should shut up, stay at home, and get on with project work until we do have some. This would save us a lot of expense, and also increase the amount of time we spend doing useful work in the office.
• It can be argued (and I think this is Scott's position) that we have a duty to get out there and raise the profile of our centre, so there must be a steady stream of public woffling even when there's not much to woffle about. However, I feel that presenting on trivial or half-finished work actually diminishes rather than enhances our reputation.
• Only the people closely involved with a project should publish or write about it. A good indicator of whether you're in this position with regard to a specific project would be if you're capable of writing a good paper on it without asking for explanations, help, or "clarification" from other people about what it does and how it works.
• There is a good place for talking publicly about work-in-progress and reporting on projects which are not yet finished: this blogging system. Anyone who wants to know about (say) what we've done to customize B2Evo to make it work the way we want it to, or how we're learning to build our work habits and documentation around it, can read the lengthy project history in the posts on its blog; there's no need to travel vast distances to talk about it. When a project is mature (meaning that the project itself is non-trivial, some significant milestone has been surpassed, there is a real-world non-beta functioning public product, and enough time has passed for useful assessment of same), then a presentation is probably appropriate.

I would reiterate that these are only my own opinions, and Scott and I disagree about much of this stuff. The disagreement is friendly and the debate it has raised has helped me, at least, clarify my own ideas and feelings about the role of HCMC and our responsibilities towards the people we work with.

This post includes the minutes spent drafting this post. Now back to proper work!