gripe about Washington Usenix conference

[dave at onfcanim.UUCP]

>I also prefer the speaker be a the foil projector so s/he can point to
>something on the foil with a pencil.  The flashlight arrow that a speaker
>at the lecturn has to use is harder to see, and distracting because it
>jiggles around on the screen because it is hard to hold the flashlight
>steady.

At the Toronto USENIX, the lecturn was equipped with a pointer that
used a helium-neon laser instead of a projected white-light arrow.  Its
visibility was far better than the conventional pointer; the intense
red spot would be hard to miss.  I assume they rented the pointer from
somewhere; it was clearly designed for just such a use and was not a
lab laser.

That was a few years ago now, and I'm surprised I've never seen a laser
pointer at a conference since then, given how well it worked.