25 minute seminars

Most Statistics and Biostatistics departments have weekly seminars. We usually invite outside speakers to share their knowledge via a 50 minute powerpoint (or beamer) presentation. This gives us the opportunity to meet colleagues from other Universities and pick their brains in small group meetings. This is all great. But, giving a good one hour seminar is hard. Really hard. Few people can pull it off. I propose to the statistical community that we cut the seminars to 25 minutes with 35 minutes for questions and further discussion. We can make exceptions of course. But in general, I think we would all benefit from shorter seminars.