Distributed Hosting

(This post was my speech at Infosys China Toastmasters Club,Shanghai.)

For the last 2000 years since the inception of public speaking, we have been living in a single domain hosting world where the speaker stands in front and addresses his audience. Today, history is going to be created.

Fellow Toastmasters and esteemed guests, I , Rahul Upadhyay, stand here to present to you "Distributed Hosting", public speaking in the new age.

The traditional single person single domain hosting is something like this. (Diagram).

Let us discuss something about this first. What are the pros for a single speaker:

1. Easier for audience to focus.

2. Speaker in charge of the whole event.

3. Success of event depends partially on the ability of the speaker.

What are the cons:

1. Large audience may not feel connected with speaker.

2. Inefficient speaker can mar the whole event.

Now let us consider what some smart people have recently started doing:

Multiple person single domain hosting world: (Diagram)

Pros:

1. Create excitement as single person can become boring.

2. Less dependent on single person.

Cons:

1. Large audience may not feel connected with speaker.

If you look at all these models, one thing that stands out is that people who develop these models do not care about the audience esp the audience at the back of the hall.

So, today on 24th of January 2008, I present to you the mulitple person , multiple domain hosting model.

It looks something like this: (Diagram)

Pros:

1. Multiple points of contact for audience.

2. More interaction with audience.

3. Less dependency on single person.

4. More involved conversation between different hosts and hosts-audience.

5. Large audience can feel connected with the whole event.

Cons:

1. Requires coordination among hosts. That means more practice for hosts.

2. The multiple-person multiple-domain hosting world can turn chaotic. Need an additional synthesizer/collborator to carry the whole event.

3. Audience can sometimes get confused about the whole event.

During the recently concluded Infosys China Annual Dinner, we for the first time, tried to implement this new model. Was it successful ?? Was it enjoyable ?? Was it a welcome change ??

Some lessons learnt:

1. Check the audio enhancement capabilities of the hall.

2. Check the wireless range of the microphone equipments, as hosts are distributed.

3. Check the interference zone of the wireless microphone equipments., as hosts are mobile.

4. Though it is distributed, always keep the best speaker/better than others at the front position. This is for risk mitigation, so that even if technology fails you, you still can carry on the show in the traditional method.

5. Have enough participation from the audience at regular random intervals, not only at specified intervals.

This is the era of collboration.The era of youtube, the era of torrents and the era of open source. I now declare it the era of multiple person multiple domain hosting.

Thanks.