Long, narrow rooms are not great for meetings, presentations, seminars, etc. It's not easy to move to and fro amongst the participants, and the people at the back are a little too far back.
It's even worse when a huge and pointless pillar in the middle of the left side of the room restricts the sight-lines, and basically reduces the effective width of the venue by about one third.
Ah yes, and then - why not? - let's have floor-to-ceiling windows down the whole of one side of the room, to ensure that - even with wooden blinds, and on the north side of the building (but, alas, also on the top floor, under a flat roof) - the room will get baking hot.
Let's have our refreshment table inside the seminar room rather than outside, so that the burbling of the (permanently on) water-boiler will be a constant irritation - and throw lots of steam into the already quite-humid-enough atmosphere.
Let's have the most enormous tables we can possibly find - to make it really difficult to move them around to change the seating arrangements, and to create a daunting physical barrier between the participants and the presenter. Insist that I have to use one of these, too, even though it is at least five times bigger than I need. I would be quite happy with a coffee table, or a chair, to put my lap-top on, but NO - I have to base myself behind one of these ridiculously huge tables, which makes it almost impossible to develop good interaction with the participants.
Let's not have a ceiling-mounted PowerPoint projector. Perching one on a desk at the front of the room is so much more stable, and has the added advantage of making it impossible for me to move anywhere at the front of the room without crossing the path of the beam.
Let's have a gigantic projector screen that covers virtually the whole of the usable area of the end wall - leaving no room at the sides to display a whiteboard or flipchart, and, er, nowhere for me to stand.
It's even worse when a huge and pointless pillar in the middle of the left side of the room restricts the sight-lines, and basically reduces the effective width of the venue by about one third.
Ah yes, and then - why not? - let's have floor-to-ceiling windows down the whole of one side of the room, to ensure that - even with wooden blinds, and on the north side of the building (but, alas, also on the top floor, under a flat roof) - the room will get baking hot.
Let's have our refreshment table inside the seminar room rather than outside, so that the burbling of the (permanently on) water-boiler will be a constant irritation - and throw lots of steam into the already quite-humid-enough atmosphere.
Let's have the most enormous tables we can possibly find - to make it really difficult to move them around to change the seating arrangements, and to create a daunting physical barrier between the participants and the presenter. Insist that I have to use one of these, too, even though it is at least five times bigger than I need. I would be quite happy with a coffee table, or a chair, to put my lap-top on, but NO - I have to base myself behind one of these ridiculously huge tables, which makes it almost impossible to develop good interaction with the participants.
Let's not have a ceiling-mounted PowerPoint projector. Perching one on a desk at the front of the room is so much more stable, and has the added advantage of making it impossible for me to move anywhere at the front of the room without crossing the path of the beam.
Let's have a gigantic projector screen that covers virtually the whole of the usable area of the end wall - leaving no room at the sides to display a whiteboard or flipchart, and, er, nowhere for me to stand.
And then, to complete my perfect happiness, have the air-conditioning fail to operate effectively. And, despite empty promises that you will get it taken care of, repeatedly fail to have it working for subsequent seminar engagements in the series. And fail/refuse to make any alternative provision for cooling the room down - like, maybe, borrowing a couple of portable fans for the afternoon.
Am I too fussy? Perhaps I am! All I ask is a little bit of space to move around in, that's not directly in front of the projection screen. And a working temperature of less than 30⁰ C. I don't think that's so very demanding.
But my Chinese partners almost invariably do.....
2 comments:
This sounds nightmarish. The long-narrow conference/training room is one of the scenarios I always try to anticipate and plan for, because of my hearing. Human nature being what it is, at least here in the US, people (other than sycophants) tend not to occupy the front-row seats -- which is good for me (multiple choices up there). Even so, if I get to such a room late, it's almost impossible to follow what's going on up at the front of the room.
Same problem in reverse if I'm actually leading the seminar/meeting: I can't hear the questions from rows much further back than a row or two. I do a lot of aisle-walking under these conditions.
It made for some frustrating/amusing situations when I was teaching, 30-plus years ago. Especially when it was my department chairman asking a question during a class observation.
Oh, for an aisle to walk in!
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