Why being a scheduled speaker is useful…
Posted by Frenya Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:15:00 GMT
Last Friday, I was at the Ocular Microbiology and Immunology Group (OMIG) meeting in New Orleans, LA and something a little surrealist happened. At the end of the morning, which also was the end of the meeting (it is small with about 50 people attending each year), everybody was getting ready to leave and was chatting with their neighbor when an old British ophthalmologist decided that he had something interesting to say to all and just went to the microphone and started speaking. As it can be imagined, very few heard him and actually tried to concentrate on what he was saying. It was bizarre to see all these people talking to each other while being completely oblivious to what the old man had to say… granted, I suspect that the unscheduled speaker did not have all his head (if his speech is of any indication), but still I felt that I suddenly was in the fifth dimension! This less than five minutes experience reminded me of the Twilight Zone… a room full of people chatting and an old man explaining a medical case as if he had the audience complete attention.
That just shows that if you want to present something to your peers, try to plan it and let others know that you want to do that…otherwise, you night end up talking to the walls…
