gripe about Washington Usenix conference

[Henry Spencer]

Thinking back over the Washington Usenix conference, I'd say that on the
whole it was pretty well run.  (The topics of the conference may not have
been of interest to everyone, but that's a different issue.)  I would like
to lodge a complaint about one thing that annoyed me very much at the time,
though.

People who have read the Collyer/Spencer paper in the proceedings and who
also heard my presentation of it may have noticed that the presentation
was relatively disorganized by comparison.  Some of this was simply because
I miscalculated and ran out of time for preparation; sorry about that.  But
a significant part of it was due to a botch by the organizers, which I raise
in public in hopes that it won't happen again.  The botch was very simple:
there wasn't a lectern by the overhead projector.  Consequently, there was
nowhere to put my notes where I could read them.  I simply had to keep them
in my hands, with the obvious complications whenever I wanted to change an
overhead foil and needed both hands free.  This wouldn't be a problem for
people who simply read their talk off their foils, but since I dislike that
practice and refuse to engage in it myself, I was stuck.  It was a nasty
complication for a relatively inexperienced speaker, I wasn't prepared for
it, and it hampered my talk significantly.  Argh.

For that matter, having to bend over every time I wanted to change a foil --
becaus there was no table to put the foils on -- didn't help either.

This may have affected others, too.  I wasn't the only disorganized speaker
that afternoon.

So, the message to conference organizers is:  a physical setup like this
encourages people to recite their talk off their foils, rather than using
the visual aids to provide *visual* support for the talk.  If you want to
encourage high-quality visuals, don't force people to make their visuals
double as notes.  Provide a lectern or at least a table near the overhead.
-- 
Legalize			Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
freedom!			{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry