2001-03-05 - 22:13:31

Asilomar Day 2:

[Don't worry, I'll be brief today.]

The big event for this second day was it was the day that I had to present all my forecasting work before an audience of around 40 biologists and engineers. The weather was nice, and before my presentation another engineer from the operations group had given a teasing presentation designed to encourage people to sit in my technical break out session.

A break out session basically is when several speakers are sent to different rooms to talk at the same time about fairly technical topics. I don't think my work is any more technical than many of the other presentations, but I'm biased here too.

Two speakers went before me. After the first presentation there were tons of questions for the first speaker. Some of the answers she knew, others she did not.

It is so hard not to jump in somebody else's presentation and answer questions you know for them. Since I worked with her on this over the past year, I knew all the answers ... it was painful to sit with my mouth shut.

Fortunately I had a nice dress suit and tie on ... complete with wingtip dress shoes. Since I was told to dye my hair to a mundane colour for this presentation, I went ahead and dressed to the nines. Nobody else was dressed as nicely, which was my point. Though after the presentation I simply put a leather bikers jacket with chains back on and walked around as is. Also part of my statement, as people would clearly see I dressed the role, then I went to my version of comfy.

And let me say, most biologists tend to wear blue jeans, flannel shirts (it was cold in Monterey), and sandles. I don't know why they like sandles ... their feet are not interesting looking. I guess it is a throw back to a hippy thing. Sandles ... bleck.

Oh the presentations ... so I listened and took note of all the questions for the first two presentations. When mine came up (which I had practiced for two weeks) instead of sticking to what I had in my mind, I changed my intro to tell people when and which questions that were already asked that I would answer.

I then proceeded to talk for just under 30 mins about my presentation and took extra time on those "hot topics" from the earlier presentations. I had slides ready to answer each question ... and audience handouts.

The best thing was I started my presentation by handing everybody a fortune cookiee with custom fortunes. Stompy replaced the fortunes with ones that had the web page for my forecasting work and some random quotes. I begged and begged for her to include an ace of spades or a skull and cross bones, but she wouldn't accept all of my ideas. Hey, at least I insterted some wacky burried treasure fortunes. :) Go to x coordinate, y coordinate to find {blank}. hehehehe

There wasn't a single question for me, but everybody was awake and looked in awe. My bosses boss (who hates my hair) came up and told me it was an excellent presentation. Several other co-workers said it was the best they've ever seen me. The words, "You've come a long way baby" rolled out of one guy's mouth. I never was bad, but I had people telling me (strangers) how much they loved my presentation.

I think it is because I do know how to forecast and build this process that I did so well. That and because I prepared for everything back in Nov. I am like that. When something makes me neverous, I tackle it head on and early.

Anyway, that night I went to the beach with Particle and Bronco. Particle knows I hate water and beaches in particular ... but I just stayed near the shore, which smelled like dead sea-weed.

Oceans are gross. They really are. They are so organic ... so fluid ... so dangerous! You could fall in and drown. Nope, I'll stick to mountains, cities, fields, caves, and forests ... oh and deserts (but they suck too).

After a long walk, we basically returned to a cabin where Stompy was and all just sat down and talked while Particle and I drank a few beers and ate cookiees.

NEXT: End of Asilomar

-=-

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