henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/29/91)
A pet peeve of mine came to mind the other day, and since I'm not a speaker at this Usenix, I can indulge myself... :-) Have you timed your talk? There are few things that annoy an audience more, or give them a lower opinion of the speaker, than the following. Speaker starts out giving a leisurely and interesting presentation of his material. Halfway through, he realizes he has ten more minutes to cover 80% of his material. He goes into frenzy mode, desperately trying to touch all the bases in his work, punting all details to "well, that's in the paper", and finishes breathless, having said absolutely nothing in those ten minutes that wasn't said better and more entertainingly in the paper. If you're going to ask an audience to listen to you, do your homework. Don't assume that your talk is the right length automatically. I once timed what I thought would be a 20-minute talk and it came out to 60. A wee bit of surgery was necessary to get it down to size. Doing this right means doing it in advance, not improvising wildly on the spur of the moment. The audience wants to hear the stuff that *isn't* in your paper, or at least is there in relatively dry and formal type. If you run short of time, pick one topic and give it full attention, rather than giving a whirlwind presentation of your outline. -- "We're thinking about upgrading from | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
libes@cme.nist.gov (Don Libes) (05/29/91)
In article <1991May28.183003.18759@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >A pet peeve of mine came to mind the other day... >If you're going to ask an audience to listen to you, do your homework. Here's a related peeve: The audience is responsible for homework, too. >The audience wants to hear the stuff that *isn't* in your paper... At a USENIX last year we were given 5 minutes for questions at the end of our talks. Due to this lack of time, I answered almost every question with "Good question, it's discussed at length in the paper." The third time I did this the audience started laughing since it was so reminiscent of "RTFM". Unfortunately, humor was not my intent. I felt very sorry about it because I got plenty of good questions later, but it can easily take a person, say, 40 seconds to ask a question. All you need are several like this to take up your five minutes. I had carefully timed everything, but with time so limited (we had 15 minutes to speak), the audience must do their part as well. Read the papers beforehand of any talks at which you think you might ask questions. (This statement really belongs in the conference program.) Don Libes libes@cme.nist.gov ...!uunet!cme-durer!libes
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (05/29/91)
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) on a pet peeve: > There are few things that annoy an audience more, or give them a lower > opinion of the speaker, than the following. Speaker starts out giving a > leisurely and interesting presentation of his material. Halfway through, > he realizes he has ten more minutes to cover 80% of his material. He goes > into frenzy mode, desperately trying to touch all the bases in his work,... ... > If you're going to ask an audience to listen to you, do your homework. [time your talk] All well said. A simple way to keep yourself close to the correct time and proportion for each topic is to subdivide your talk. Say you've got 25 minutes to talk--that might break into 5 minutes of intro and conclusion, 10 minutes on one important topic, 5 minutes on each of two lesser topics. The 10-minute chunk might need another subdivision if you're having trouble keeping the time right. Just put the times alongside the topics in your outline, and check your progress against the "schedule" periodically. That way, if you're rambling and losing time, you'll see it soon enough that the correction can be minor (dropping a few lesser points here and there to get back on schedule) instead of the wholesale panic Henry describes. If you're less comfortable speaking to a large group, add more time checkpoints so you have a small enough error that you won't worry about it. It's good practice to learn to track the time while you're talking...since speaking involves mental juggling of several balls anyway (speaking, listening to yourself for mistakes, gauging audience interest/ reaction,...) -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Simpler is better.
eliot@chutney.rtp.dg.com (Topher Eliot) (05/29/91)
In article <3492@muffin.cme.nist.gov>, libes@cme.nist.gov (Don Libes) writes: |> In article <1991May28.183003.18759@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: |> Here's a related peeve: |> The audience is responsible for homework, too. |> |> ... |> I had carefully timed everything, but with time so limited (we had 15 |> minutes to speak), the audience must do their part as well. Read the |> papers beforehand of any talks at which you think you might ask |> questions. (This statement really belongs in the conference program.) Here's a halfway measure that might help: when it comes to Q&A time, announce that you are giving priority to those who have read the paper, and invite them to step raise their hands first (or step to the head of their line at the microphone, or whatever). -- Topher Eliot Data General DG/UX Internationalization (919) 248-6371 62 T. W. Alexander Dr., Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 eliot@dg-rtp.dg.com {backbone}!mcnc!rti!dg-rtp!eliot Obviously, I speak for myself, not for DG. I try not to be superstitious. Superstitions bring bad luck.
henry@ADS.COM (Henry Mensch) (05/31/91)
libes@cme.nist.gov (Don Libes) wrote: ->I had carefully timed everything, but with time so limited (we had 15 ->minutes to speak), the audience must do their part as well. Read the ->papers beforehand of any talks at which you think you might ask ->questions. (This statement really belongs in the conference program.) of course, for many this is only possible if the proceedings are available sooner than registration ... we haven't all had evelyn wood, you know ... -- # Henry Mensch / Advanced Decision Systems / <henry@ads.com>
tower@buitc.bu.edu (Leonard (Len) H. Tower Jr.) (05/31/91)
In article <1991May29.150709.15363@dg-rtp.dg.com> eliot@dg-rtp.dg.com writes: |In article <3492@muffin.cme.nist.gov>, libes@cme.nist.gov (Don Libes) writes: ||> In article <1991May28.183003.18759@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: ||> Here's a related peeve: ||> The audience is responsible for homework, too. ||> ||> ... ||> I had carefully timed everything, but with time so limited (we had 15 ||> minutes to speak), the audience must do their part as well. Read the ||> papers beforehand of any talks at which you think you might ask ||> questions. (This statement really belongs in the conference program.) | |Here's a halfway measure that might help: when it comes to Q&A time, announce |that you are giving priority to those who have read the paper, and invite |them to step raise their hands first (or step to the head of their line at |the microphone, or whatever). It's less then halfway. There are many people, who can ask intelligent probing questions without having read your paper, who I wish could be given priority instead of those who have spent last night dweebing over the paper. For example: Chris Torek, Mike O'Dell, Ed Gould, Deborah Scherrer, Evi Nemeth, Keith Bostic, Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Rick Adams, Barry Shein, Doug Gwyn, Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie, Andrew Hume, Sharon Murrel, Tom Duff, Eric Allman, Dan Geer, Rob Kolstad, Doug Gwyn, John Gilmore, and quite a few others. Simple filters don't work. A spotlight on each question mike, allowing the presenter (and audience) to see the queue and select people, could raise the average level of question. Some would cry unfair, as it would tend to give precedence to known wizards. thanx -len (Apologies for mis-spellings and ommissions. Haven't had my first Coca Cola of the day ;-).
gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) (06/01/91)
In article <82848@bu.edu> tower@buitc.bu.edu (Leonard (Len) H. Tower Jr.) writes: >It's less then halfway. There are many people, who can ask >intelligent probing questions without having read your paper, who I >wish could be given priority instead of those who have spent last >night dweebing over the paper. For example: Chris Torek, Mike O'Dell, >Ed Gould, Deborah Scherrer, Evi Nemeth, Keith Bostic, Kirk McKusick, >Mike Karels, Rick Adams, Barry Shein, Doug Gwyn, Rob Pike, Dennis >Ritchie, Andrew Hume, Sharon Murrel, Tom Duff, Eric Allman, Dan Geer, >Rob Kolstad, Doug Gwyn, John Gilmore, and quite a few others. Gee, I guess I should feel honored to be the only one who gets to ask TWO questions! >Simple filters don't work. Seriously, though, >Some would cry unfair, as it would tend to give >precedence to known wizards. Wizards tend to communicate with each other anyway, and don't need to wait for the spotlight at a USENIX Conference. I think the problem is that (a) asking questions of a speaker is not a very efficient form of education and (b) too many people use the opportunity merely to grind their personal axes. It doesn't seem worth worrying much about.
bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) (06/01/91)
I have a better idea, we can just have designated questions! We'll
design several catagories and have people with loud voices volunteer
to ask them at each talk:
1. Deep, thoughtful question:
So, tell me _______ (first name preferable to appear very
personal and familiar), where do you plan to go with all this?
2. Embarrassing, put-em-on-the-spot question:
Didn't I just read a very similar paper in a recent
ACM, or maybe it was IEEE, journal? How familiar are
you with the literature in this field anyhow?
3. Broad, pointless but important philosophical question:
Would you really consider this to be in the spirit of Unix?
4. Who cares question:
Could you tell us who funded this work?
5. Everyone cares question:
Could you tell us when we can expect to see this in
a commercial product?
6. Universal questions:
Is it my turn? Is this microphone on? Can everyone hear
me?
Sorry, that's all we have time for, thank you for coming.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLDemv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/01/91)
In article <BZS.91May31140615@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
5. Everyone cares question:
Could you tell us when we can expect to see this in
a commercial product?
better yet,
Where can I FTP it from?
This was the right question to ask about the BBN dialup IP, for
instance, announced in San Diego two years before it saw the light of
day....
--Ed