Tag Archives: Scientific presentations

Practice, practice, practice

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“Practice is the best of all instructors”
Publilius Syrus (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

Back from the AAPM scientific meeting, and kudos’ to the organizers for an excellent meeting. Over the past few years, they have set-up a “Best in” category regrouping the 5 highest scored abstracts in each 3 broad categories of the meeting. Not only do they get oral presentations but they also deserved a special poster viewing session. An extremely interesting and exciting session!

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Scientific presentations: next time use the mouse!

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There is one funny thing about modern scientific presentations. We use PPT or Keynote and have nice looking images, data table, figures and movies. Yet when it comes to pointing out a specific element in a slide, we are given an external tool (external to the presention system) : the laser pointer. When you do that, and in particular if the preson presenting is sightly (or overly) stressed out, interesting things happen:

  • Laser is flashed at the audiance and not only at the screen.
  • In rooms with a main monitor and secondary monitors or two main monitors (large ballroom), the laser is shown only on the screen you are pointing at i.e. you are loosing a significant portion of the audience.
  • The best one (and it happen regularly), pointing at the computer screen with the laser (or with your finger!): it does not help you nor the audience. It does make for a good laugh however…

    • So for your next presentation learn a new trick: using the mouse or trackpad to “point” directly on the computer screen. It will show on all monitors and no one will be worried about getting a laser beam in their eyes 😉

    P.S.: no these laser pointers are not dangerous.