Things have been busy this week, after we got back from Melbourne I had four talks to give in two days, all of which needed preparing. Two of them I managed to adapt from previous presentations so it did eventually all get done. I thought they all went down pretty well.
You can always tell from the number and type of questions you get afterwards.
If people ask things that you already covered in laborious detail, then it's a pretty clear sign that they switched off part way through.
If you manage to get members of the audience bickering amongst themselves about some of your results, then it's a success.
On the other hand, if there are lots of questions it either means (a) people are really interested or (b) you didn't explain yourself sufficiently.
If there are no questions then either (a) nobody turned up, (b) nobody cares, (c) your work is so fantastic that everyone understands it, or (d) you were practising in front of the mirror at home.
This afternoon I fly out to Melbourne for the ICONN 2008 conference. I have a 15-minute talk to give on the Wednesday which still needs preparing. 15 minutes is a bit of a nuisance - it's not really enough time to really get into the guts of your work; although in the present situation that is probably a good thing.
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2 comments:
Have you tried just making stuff up, then just for good measure practicing in the mirror your fabrications until they roll smoothly off the tongue as if Shakespeare. Or, just have Jim, my imaginary reporter in my head, stop by for a little Q & A beforehand, asking the toughest questions.
Oh yes...
More often than not, as I'm practising, it goes something like:
"And here we see this graph, which shows some interesting behaviour in the high-Q region, apart from this feature that we don't fully understand but we think it might be some sort of quantum confinement effect and you're not going to say this in the real thing so why are you saying it now?"
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