Session talk
I was in Nor’n Irelan’ at the end of July for my annual week of Belfast Tradfest.
It was the best one yet. Classes in the morning, sessions all day, and concerts in the evening.
There were also some excellent events at Ulster University during the afternoons—talks, film screenings, interviews and discussions.
If you squint closely at the poster for this year’s event you’ll see my name on there. That’s because one of those afternoon events was me giving a talk about thesession.org.
I’m no stranger to public speaking but this was a very different audience to the usual conferences I speak at. I had to make sure not to get technical. So I talked about the history of the site, the house rules, changes made over time, and pointed out some features that people might’ve missed.
I also made sure not to speak for too long. I had an hour but I kept the presentation to just 25 minutes so that there’d be plenty of time for questions and discussions afterwards.
It went really well. People had lots of questions and ideas.
Some interesting themes emerged from the discussion…
There was no shortage of suggestions for features that were technically possible, but that I’m probably not going to add because of they might clutter up the interface.
Some other people had suggestions for features that were actually already on the site …but implemented in such a subtle way that you could easily miss them.
This highlights an ongoing balancing act I’ve been performing for the site’s two and a half decades of existence. I want to keep improving the site and ensuring that powerful features are available. But I also want to keep the site streamlined and easy to use.
Thinking about it, this is one of the things that sets The Session apart from other tune collections out there. Many of them have great content but it’s not always easy to get to grips with it, at least at first.
Still, I may have gone too far in the other direction with The Session. In trying to avoid cluttering up the interface, I might’ve buried some features a little deep.
Anyway, all of this has been great food for thought. I’m really glad I got to meet so many people who use The Session. It literally wouldn’t exist without them.