Author: cd@conference.org
Description: PerlPointCD Demo

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# 03: Setting up the Tracks

Every conference has several types of talks. At the German Perl Workshop we use to have Tutorials, Long Talks, Short Talks and even Lightning Talks. More, there are special types like Invited Talks, BOFs and the like.

For each presentation type, there are speakers talking. Several speakers just hold one talk. Others provide lots of them.

The point is that the talks can be easily categorized. Here is how PerlPointCD does it:

| A conference has `Event` types. Oops, this should read event types. ;-) (Internally, event types are refered as "styles".)

| There are speakers for each type of event.

| Every speaker gives talks.

So the hierarchy is style - author - talk. Pretty easy. And the directory structure reflects it.

For every hierarchy level, the tool expects a corresponding directory level in the `data` subdirectory of `build`. So to organize the talks for the CD, just make the directories.

      Let's say we have two Long Talks by
      James Fletcher about "The art
      of presentation" and "Burning a CD".
      The second one is held together with his
      wife Jane.

      The corresponding directory structure is

        Long_Talk/James_Fletcher/The_art_of_presentation
        Long_Talk/James_Fletcher,_Jane_Fletcher/Burning_a_CD

      in the build/data directory.

What about the underscores? They represent spaces. If the file system supports spaces in file names, spaces can be used directly as well (but it might make handling handier to stay with the underscores).

Please note how the Fletchers were combined in the authors directory name. The convention is to use a comma and optional whitespaces around it.

Working on a directory base makes it easy to move talks around.

      If Mr. Fletcher decides to give Tutorials
      instead of Long Talks, all I have to do is
      to move the Fletcher directories from
      Long_Talks to Tutorials.

It's also easy to add or cancel events at any time during conference preparation.

Now, I suggest to play around and add a few talks, aehm, directories. There is no need for contents - the directories will make a pretty nice CD frame.

Index-related:

- Integrating stuff
- Directory order

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