Informs should return to live presentations for Edelman
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Ken Fordyce
director analytics without borders
Arkieva
Wilmington DE
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-09-2023 08:08
From: Rajesh Tyagi
Subject: Seeking Input on Future Edelman Presentation Format
Dear INFORMS colleagues:
We welcome your feedback on the following.
Before the pandemic, Edelman finalists presented their work live at the Analytics Conference. These presentations were recorded and made available to the public on YouTube. During the four most recent competitions, Edelman finalists prepared their own videos that were used in the judging and were shown on screen during the conference.
The Practice Section Board met recently and (tentatively) plans to return to the pre-pandemic practice of Edelman finalists presenting their work live at the conference in front of the judges. This will lead to better conference experiences for the finalists and the other conference attendees and draw more finalist participants (especially executives) to the conference. It also removes a potential barrier to entering the competition as not all organizations can afford the expense of preparing a documentary-quality video.
Unfortunately, the professional recording of the live competition (with teleprompter) is expensive (about $50K). We are looking into options on recording including:- We tell finalists that they must provide a 2-3 minute video highlighting their work and its beneficial impact. The video would be shown at the Gala and posted in YouTube. Currently, this is optional, although most entrants, even prior to the pandemic, have provided these short videos.
- Professionals record the live competition. Offset the expense by increasing the conference registration fee or reducing costs (e.g. instead of a Gala celebration dinner, have a less formal dinner without the ceremony, staging, alcoholic drinks, and perhaps drop a dinner course), and by working with the INFORMS Board to determine how to budget for this expense.
- Provide competitors with the option of providing a video, in addition to the live presentation. The resulting video would be posted on the INFORMS web site and YouTube. It could be long (e.g. 40 minutes or even longer) or short (e.g. a few minutes that highlight the project and its beneficiary impact) or medium length. We could tell the finalists that judges would watch the videos on a best-efforts basis (if received 3 weeks prior to the competition) but that their live presentations should assume that not all judges have watched the videos
- Amateur-recording of the competition using automatic recording technology
- No video recording of the competition
Our choices for now are:
A. Require live presentations, as prior to the pandemic, and investigate at a later date the 5 options listed above for recording the presentations.
B. Give teams the option of live or pre-recorded presentations, and possibly not record those presentations that are given live.
C. Require all teams to provide pre-recorded videos for the 40 minute presentation, as has been done from 2020-2023.
We want to start publicizing the competition now for the next cycle, and want to be up front in any marketing material about whether live presentations or pre-recorded videos will be required. So we are asking for your feedback. Do you have feedback on this? We especially welcome feedback received by 23:59 EST on Thursday, June 15. However, if you have insights on amateur-recording technology, please send any feedback you can by June 30.
Chair, Edelman Competition