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Thanks to Dori for her blog link on the Aiga conference. I copied from it this particularly pointed and important observation. I've removed the names of the guilty parties as I feel this is a different medium from blogging, but you can find them on the blog if you want to know. Dori said: "I missed almost all of Nnnn Nnnnn and Nnnn Nnnnnnn’s presentation on design education and the constancy of change. They did not stand next to the mikes, read their papers, and failed to use engaging visuals. Thus the combination of low blood sugar and poor sound quality made it impossible for me to follow what they were saying." These words should engraved on every researcher's brain, especially at conference time. Dori is not criticising these guys for their lack of sparkling wit, she does not expect the rhetorical skills of Cicero, but she is asking that we all follow some basic rules of good communication and good manners and remember that the audience may be tired, hungry and overloaded. At the recent Wonderground conference (where Dori sat in the front row and asked some sharp questions) there were some excellent engaging presentations by both experienced people and novices. But there were also some very badly prepared, unrehearsed talks with poor visual aids (sometimes just the text of the talk projected on screen - why do we need that?) and people reading their papers word for word. One of the best conference presentations I ever saw was by a Hungarian clinical engineer doing research into the mechanical structure of the skull. He started by projecting a slide of very complicated graphs and mathematical diagrams then said "This is the data from our research, impressive isn't it? But you can read all about that in the paper so I'll tell you why we did the work and what we learned." I feel this is an important responsibility for research degree suspervisors. Are we giving students enough experience of organising and presenting their work? Are they properly prepared when they go to their first conference? Are we setting a good example in our own practices as teachers and researchers? If you go to a conference the biggest success you can have is people deciding they want to know more about your research, whether they decide to read the paper or talk to you about it. Catherine Harper explained recently on this list how she used conference papers to build up a research narrative for a journal papers. I've seen colleagues approached by editors of important journals who found their conference presentations interesting enough to invite them to submit something. That's how our research infrastructure operates and every time somebody fails to make a good job of presenting themselves and their work they are wasting their own efforts and wasting our time. best wishes from Sheffield Chris *Catherine's message will be found at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0702&L=phd-design&T=0&O=A&X=1ED6545B41835782F3&Y=chris%40chrisrust.net&P=6981 ********************************* Prof Chris Rust Head of Art and Design Research Centre Sheffield Hallam University Psalter Lane, Sheffield S11 8UZ, UK +44 114 225 2706/2682 [log in to unmask] www.chrisrust.net