Purpose: Define what an "Oustervote" is.
[Someone want to summarize what John Ousterhout meant by this term?]
Having seen and participated in enough oustervotes to start using the term myself, I think I can take a stab.
It just means "unscientific audience poll". Defining hallmarks of an 'oustervote' are:
- it's a simple multiple choice, single-answer question, you answer by raising hands
- you always include a catch-all choice so that everyone votes, even if it's "undecided" or "other"
- you summarize the results in front of the audience right after the last choice
- it's almost always used a piece of data to make a comment or plan a course of action right there ("So the majority of users still use emacs" or "So it's pretty clear even if we had this feature, less than a third present would ever touch it", etc.