The hallway track is the name given to everything that happens at a conference outside the rooms: the conversations in the queue for coffee, the questions asked after a talk rather than during it, and the twenty minutes over lunch where somebody describes a problem and somebody else has already solved it. It is not on the schedule and it is, for a large part of every audience, the reason to attend at all.
Why it produces more than the talks
A talk is one person’s account of a problem they had, prepared months earlier and pitched at a whole room. A hallway conversation is about the specific problem in hand, answered by somebody who can ask what has already been tried. The second is a better fit almost by construction, and it takes five minutes rather than forty.
The other difference is direction. A talk cannot be interrupted, and the question that would have made it useful arrives twenty minutes after it ended. In a corridor the question comes first and the answer is shaped around it.
None of this makes the talks pointless. The talks are what put a hundred and fifty people who care about the same subject in one building on the same day, which is the condition the corridor depends on.
What the schedule has to do
Reading the plan above, the corridor is not a place, it is unoccupied time next to a coffee urn. Which means it is a scheduling decision, and it is the first thing cut when an event tries to fit in one more talk.
Breaks have a floor. Below about twenty minutes a break is a queue and a walk, and no conversation survives it. Fifteen-minute gaps do not produce a shorter hallway track; they produce none at all, which is set out in more detail on the programme and tracks page.
A single-track day helps for a reason that has nothing to do with the programme: everybody breaks at the same moment, so the room outside is full rather than trickling. Multi-track events with staggered breaks lose most of this without ever deciding to.
Fifteen-minute gaps do not shorten the conversation. They prevent it.
How to use it as an attendee
The mechanics are unglamorous. Stand near the coffee rather than against a wall. Ask what somebody works on, which is the question everybody present is prepared for. Skip one talk deliberately, on the basis that the talk will be recorded and the conversation will not.
Leaving a conversation is the part people worry about and the part nobody minds. Saying so plainly and going is the normal ending, and a conversation that has run out is obvious to both people at about the same time.
What organisers can do without spending anything
Put the coffee where people have to stand rather than pass through. Give breaks a real length. Leave one slot on the schedule empty rather than filling it. And give the room something to talk about: a question written up somewhere, or a speaker who says plainly that they will be by the coffee afterwards.
The last one is worth more than it sounds. A speaker who names a place and a time converts the question everybody thought of during the talk into a conversation, and it costs the event nothing at all.
The scheduling side of this is on organising a conference and the programme. For somebody attending their first one, a first conference covers the two moments where this is hardest, and mentorship is the structured version of the same idea. What an event should be doing overall is on the newcomer track.
Questions
What is the hallway track?
Everything that happens at a conference outside the rooms: conversations in the coffee queue, questions asked after a talk rather than during it, and the lunch where somebody describes a problem that somebody else has already solved.
Why is it often more useful than the talks?
A talk is one person’s account prepared months earlier for a whole room. A corridor conversation is about the specific problem in hand, answered by somebody who can ask what has already been tried, and it takes five minutes rather than forty.
How long do breaks need to be?
About twenty minutes as a floor. Below that a break is a queue and a walk, and no conversation survives it. Short gaps do not produce a shorter hallway track, they produce none at all.
Is it acceptable to skip a talk for a conversation?
Yes, and it is frequently the better trade. The talk is usually recorded and the conversation is not. Leaving a session for a corridor is one of the few decisions at a conference that can be reversed later.
What can an organiser do to encourage it?
Put the coffee where people stand rather than pass through, give breaks a real length, leave a slot empty rather than filling it, and have speakers say plainly that they will be by the coffee afterwards. None of it costs anything.