Category Archives: Research and Academia

Emotion and story telling in a scientific talk?

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During a recent group meeting, one of the student was making a comment regarding the document really bad powerpoint by Seth Godin. Her point was how can one impart emotion to a scientific talk. Clearly, when you have 7 or 8 minutes to get to the point it could indeed be difficult to make time for humor…

Yet emotion can still be generated in term of response of the audience to your data, figure or conclusion: raising eyebrows, smiles, figures looking at you making yes (or no) motions. Of course in longer presentation, these could be much more involving.

Here is an example of a great presentation of data by Hans Rosling. He used this technique numerous times but you will get the idea: Hans Rosling’s new insights on poverty | Video on TED.com.

Now, story telling is of course at the heart of what you should be doing. It is sometimes easier said than done (sometimes it works and others it don’t, unfortunately). Again, here is a great link to a talk on story telling and getting the message across on TED: Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks | Video on TED.com.

Hope these inspire you.

Digital Office I: Introduction and Hardware

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Working efficiently in the digital world is not as easy as it sounds, in particular as you get more and more files to deal with. Furthermore, while eliminated paper sounds like an excellent (and green) idea, it is not obvious to fully to eliminate all of it and yet still be productive without putting too much time on the gadgets themselves. I am have been toying with the idea of going fully digital around 2009 by bringing my notebook with me everywhere, including meeting. The truth is that many people around the table find typing and looking at a computer while having a meeting quite impolite. I further find it impractical. However the coming of the iPad change all that. The next few posts will look into the digital workflow I settled in since then.

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It is done!

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Final result in…I got promoted to full professor, effective June 1st. At that date 21 years ago, I was just starting my grad studies 😉

The most interesting part of the process leading to this promotion was the writing of a consolidated report of all my activities for the last 6 years. For me it was the first time I had to do it since I was hired directly to the associated professor level. While the exercise did produced a lengthy document, it also give a very full filing sense of accomplishment: I was quite proud of what I had achieved but more important how things looked moving forward.