surfing on chaos...
May. 4th, 2005 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayActually, only a tiny bit of chaos... I was up in front of 50 people at the conference this afternoon, giving my paper in front of most of the field's major participants. And then, about halfway through... my graphics began showing on the large screen behind me as black-X squares with "must have a TIFF reader or Quicktime installed to display image" error message. I had sent the conference organizer my slides, done in Powerpoint... but on a Mac. They loaded it on to an apparently stripped PC laptop that drove the A/V equipment and projector.
So... in front of 50 people, looking expectantly at me, and my presentation is obviously broken. Undissuaded by this, I crack jokes, refer to "if you could see this picture, it would show you..." and use the fiasco to illustrate the need for accurate metadata and common standards in sharing air traffic data among organizations. More jokes. I'm getting more attention than if the presentation had gone off normally, as the audience watches to see if I can handle this and keep up the ad-lib schtick to compensate for the missing graphics. I do. Summary, questions, and congratulatory words from FAA and Boeing guys in the foyer afterwards. I rocked. :) Whee.
So... in front of 50 people, looking expectantly at me, and my presentation is obviously broken. Undissuaded by this, I crack jokes, refer to "if you could see this picture, it would show you..." and use the fiasco to illustrate the need for accurate metadata and common standards in sharing air traffic data among organizations. More jokes. I'm getting more attention than if the presentation had gone off normally, as the audience watches to see if I can handle this and keep up the ad-lib schtick to compensate for the missing graphics. I do. Summary, questions, and congratulatory words from FAA and Boeing guys in the foyer afterwards. I rocked. :) Whee.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 09:38 pm (UTC)Yay you!
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 10:21 pm (UTC)Quick thinking, that.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 11:01 pm (UTC)I'm working on integrating *nix and Windoze machines together via LDAP, so that we can more easily share user accounts and data. I see this kind of thing all the time. And we don't even have the pressure of dealing with airplanes trying to land....
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 11:54 pm (UTC)Good going!
Date: 2005-05-05 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-05 01:10 pm (UTC)