How Not To Give A Talk

[On location in Fairfax, VA]
AT&D (Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion) is often a pretty dry subject. If I needed any extra confirmation of that, this conference is giving it to me in ample supply. Though to be fair, dry subject matter is only part of why there were only about 5 or 6 interesting talks today (out of 28 total). Usually the reason that most of the talks were bad was just because the presenters didn’t know how to speak publicly in an even marginally engaging manner. And then there were some presenters who really couldn’t speak English very well at all, which is always a challenge. It’s hard to follow what people are saying in a technical talk when you’re having to put all your concentration simply into attempting to translate what they’re speaking into comprehendible English. Sorry if that’s mean, but it’s the truth. There was one guy from Korea who took the cake for probably the worst presentation I’ve ever seen in my life though. He was: a) reading from a script, b) getting lost repeatedly while reading his script, c) speaking quite soft and oft-unintelligible English, d) more than 30 slides (it seemed like it at least), e) some slides with 30-40 tiny, tiny graphs/figures (making them all unreadable from any distance at all), f) speaking for roughly 20 minutes (your talk and question time is only supposed to be 15 minutes total, maximum), all while g) standing with his back to the audience the entire time (!!). He had set his script on the table and stood on the front side of it so that he was able to look up at the big projection screen (and hence his back was to us), instead of standing on the other side of the table, so that he could look at the computer monitor with the same stuff on it while occasionally perhaps glancing at the audience. Might’ve been a nice touch.
But on the plus side, Walter’s talk went well this morning. He may very well have been the only presenter to finish their talk in the allotted 12 minutes too, though he was talking incredibly fast to make it. (I’d count Walter’s as one of the few good talks today, though I’ll admit I’m slightly biased on that point.) And then it’d appear that the conference organizers really gave quite little thought to the poster session. After the first session of talks had already started, I tracked down one of the two primary organizers and asked him where we were supposed to hang our 5 posters from Penn State. He was like, “Oh, umm, I don’t know… how about over there maybe?” Clearly he hadn’t given it much thought. Anyway, after having some initial trouble getting the posters to stay pinned up (the surface we were pinning them into wasn’t the greatest), people started meandering to the back of the room to check out the posters. I got asked questions by I think three people, though one of the person’s questions went totally zinging over my head and way beyond the issues of my poster, I just had to say “I don’t know.” I guess that’ll happen though. But all the posters look great, especially now that they’re staying up!
It was 95 over 75 this evening when we came out of the conference here in Fairfax. Ick. Tomorrow’s supposed to get to 100…
So how did Walter & I pass the time this evening in the hotel? That’s right, looking at radar data and listening to severe weather reports coming in on KTOE AM 1420 from Mankato, MN. Yep, the big red button was being pushed repeatedly in south-central Minnesota tonight, especially in Watonwan and Blue Earth Counties. A couple people called in saying that there were farmsteads completely destroyed south of Butterfield and south of Saint James somewhere. Oddly enough, the NWS didn’t issue the tornado watch until after the first tornadoes were already on the ground south of Butterfield. Nice one guys, way to be on the ball. What are they, the State College NWS office?