I watched the Stir Trek conference today, live streaming. It was done virtually this year due to the Covid situation. That was actually mostly better for me, as the long drive down to Columbus has negatively affected the experience for me in the past, and I had decided not to go last year, although the event was later cancelled.
The presentation seemed to go pretty smoothly, with only a few glitches here and there, such as the first speaker losing connection near the end of his talk. It was done over YouTube live streaming.
There was only one track, unlike the 5 or 6 they seem to have at the normal version. This made for less choice, but also not having to miss interesting talks. The talks were all at least somewhat interesting / useful. I think the “soft skills” ones were particularly interesting to me this year.
Around lunch time, I found that the stream could be paused, so I did. The only breaks that were allocated were about 10 minutes between each talk, but I wanted to take a full lunch break. I had some leftover taco stuff and other bits of food. When I came back, I was able to start where I left off, now an hour behind. I was then able to play the buffer at up to 2 times normal speed, which I did for the breaks between talks. Some of the slower talks and intros / outros I played at 1.25 times. I still managed to finish at 16:50, which implies I didn’t make up much time.
I took off work for this, which maybe wasn’t ideal with all the time I’ve had to take off recently for health reasons. Still, it was more relaxing than work and probably good for me.