First impressions

Dick Dunn rcd at ico.ISC.COM
Thu Jul 6 16:31:09 AEST 1989


In article <11753 at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>, smb at ulysses.homer.nj.att.com
(Steven M. Bellovin) writes in response to some criticism of Baltimore
USENIX tech sessions:

> > The overhead slides were generally unreadable (I sat about halfway back)
> 
> Often, authors don't follow the guidelines they're sent on point size,

Amen!  The guidelines, incidentally, are very explicit about what will and
won't work.

> ...  This time, the situation was exacerbated because most people used
> the overhead projector, rather than more-legible 35mm slides...

There were some rather poor slides too--darkish yellow letters on a dark
blue background.  But let's not be too quick to say everyone should be
using slides--there are some compelling reasons to use transparencies for
an overhead projector:
	- It takes skilled people and special equipment to produce good
	  slides.  Many smaller organizations don't have it.  Good overhead
	  transparencies can be produced on a < $4k laser printer on a PC.
	  Smaller organizations DO have this sort of equipment because the
	  dog-and-pony shows they're doing all the time need overheads.
	- The overhead format is more convenient and familiar to many
	  folk.
	- When you're doing that one last proofreading on Friday afternoon
	  before you go to the conference, and you find that you wrote
	  "Denise Ritchie", you can run off a new overhead yourself in a
	  couple of minutes with nobody else's help.
	- When you're sitting in the hotel room going over the talk the night
	  before, and you discover that LR(k) somehow became LURK, you can
	  patch over it with a marker.
	- When you're answering a question about "that slide about work-
	  stations promoting Ferrari ownership" you can go back to it
	  directly (by calling for the overhead) instead of subjecting a
	  thousand people to the dizzying process of cycling backward
	  through two dozen slides in an automatic changer.  (In Baltimore,
	  the people who used slides generally had trouble backing up at
	  all.  This is a common phenomenon.)

I think it would be worthwhile looking for the best possible projection
technology rather than trying to encourage the use of slides.

>...in the Baltimore auditorium, only the main, direct-projection screen
> was used.  At many other recent Usenix conferences, there were video
> screens around the room with the slides shown on them; that helped
> a lot.

Agreed, that would have helped a lot.  Baltimore seemed wider and
shallower, but not enough so to eliminate the need for additional screens
further back.

> While I'm at it, let me throw in a plug for art departments.  Most large
> companies have them, and speakers from such companies should take
> advantage of their services to get some *good* slides made.  Remember --
> these folks are just as much professionals at their jobs as you are at
> yours.  I realize that some people don't have access to such facilities,
> or can't afford it if they do.  But there were many folks who could have
> but didn't.

I'm curious about just how many speakers or potential speakers really have
access to such facilities.  It must be very convenient for it to be useful,
for the reasons I mentioned above.  Obviously the AT&T or DEC sized places
can do it.  At the size of a company like Interactive (a few hundred
people) the art dept exists but may not be geared to producing material for
technical presentations.  Where's the breakpoint in the commercial world--
perhaps a Kperson?  How are universities set for this?  Note that it's more
than just having an art dept; they have to be able to deal with your
material, which may contain tricky technical stuff (and they must be
trained *not* to fix things which look obviously wrong or silly!:-), and
they have to be able to turn it around pretty fast.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com    uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd     (303)449-2870
   ...Simpler is better.



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