Historically, MACNA has reached out to the hobby and industry’s most progressive individuals to give talks, people who’s lives are somehow intertwined with marine aquariums, corals, and reef fish. This year in Denver, MACNA will carry on that legacy but it will also seek to refine the format in which these presentations are given.
At just about every reef show and prior MACNAs, most presentations have been framed within 45 to 60 minutes, which is more in line with the duration of a college lecture, not to mention the added Q&A session. The length of these presentations makes it much harder to absorb the information from a single talk, let alone a whole weekend of them.
Inspired by the short, riveting presentations of TED talks and a desire to enhance the experience of MACNA attendees, the committee of the Mile High MACNA has decided to introduce a 30 minute limit on speakers’ presentations. It’s a lot easier to pay focused attention to thirty minutes of information, and it should enable speakers to maintain a higher level of energy and emphasis on the topic for which they were invited to be a MACNA speaker in the first place.
For some MACNA goers, speakers and being educated on bleeding-edge new information about aquariums and the marine world is a huge part of making the trip. For others, the long presentations and the indeterminate duration of some overly verbose presenters are hard to fit into a busy weekend of catching up with reef friends or doing business. The new 30 minute speaker format is a great idea which should help the overall experience of going to MACNA and getting a nice dose of learning from reef people who have really cool things to share. [MACNA 2014]
