Procedures/SPIE2015 Demo Presentation

Notes and Experience from SPIE Conference & Exhibition 2015

What should we (anyone) pay attention to our presentation/demo next time?

1.DEMO in the exhibition session

(1) Equipment: remember to go through the demo yourself at least twice - so that we know what to show and what things we need - before leaving home to the conference and prepare everything that might need. (do not forget the power stripe or screw driver, some small things like this) PS: also do not forget the earphones/headphones if it has the audio components!

(2) Demo Scenes: make sure it could work on both the general display and the HMD (this time, I noticed that other ppl were confused of what content was in the HMD). It would be better both for us (the lab) and for other ppl who are interested and would like to try. So we need to make sure this could work before the last minute.

(3) Instructions to the players/participants: I observed that participants (some) are confused of what to do in the VR, especially when they are inside a crowded conference demo room and the noise is so loud. For some elder ppl, or ppl who never played games before, we need to address what can be done in the VR, and how to operate or control in the VR. (left click means what, what you can and cannot do inside the VR, etc)

(4) Interaction of the VR: maybe we could change all the control to a joy stick or some other easier interaction methods/tools. I noticed that it is hard for the participants to find the mouse after they are in the Oculus HMD.

So I would suggest us to change to joystick (or other easier controller) for demo and control.

2. Presentation or talk for full paper

(1) Slides are really important for audiences to understand and proceed what the author want to present! Make sure all the crucial information are in the slides, but also do not let text crash the mind of your audiences or direct their attention from you or your talk. Personally, I think proper image and tables would be more compelling than texts.

(2) Rehearse and rehearse before the presentation. It would be great to present before Dr. Gromala, and Dr. Shaw, and get their feedback for slides and scripts before the actual presentation. From this experience, rehearse and practice make myself feel more calm down and more relax. Of course, help me to present better.

(3) Talk slower. I did not notice that I tend to talk very fast when I was nervous. But I did realize this after Dr. Gromala pointed out the fact. So I would suggest to talk slower, maybe as slow as possible. Since you maybe already too fast than you could realize, so talk slower will in one way calm yourself down, and in another to make your audiences understand what you mean by saying each word, sentence, or terms.

(4) Have a script with you and practice it. But after you are confident with your presentation content, forget about the script. I know that I followed my script most of the time in my presentation, but from my observation of those interesting and attractive talks, presenters all always make the slides part of their stories, which means they had the structure, the logic, the content of all the slides in their head and mind. If all of the presentation content are in your mind, then it would be super easy to follow your own logic of the slides' structure. But before we become such person, we need to practice and have a script.

(5) Prepare all the things that you might need for presentation, power cable, data converter, USB Flash Disk, and so on.

More to be coming..... (will add more as soon as they come to my minds

Edited by Xin, Feb 17th, 2015