Ben Shneiderman visits our lab!
On Monday, Ben Shneiderman came to the research lab where I'm working. For those of you who don't know him, he's one of the top experts in Human Computer Interactions (HCI) - kind of how Freud is to Psychology, Ben Shneiderman is to HCI. And I had to present our project to him.
I hadn't slept well the night before (getting to bed late, getting up early) so I had me a double coffee. And I was at the lab super early getting the last things of the demo ready and setting up. Practicing my spiel. Boy oh boy the adrenaline was going strong. But the coffee was working so well that my thoughts were incredibly scattered and going a mile a minute. I couldn't slow down...
Anyways, I gave my presentation. All the years of CAVE demos and then Touch-table presentations seemed to pay off. I had to explain a lot and show a lot in about 10 minutes - maybe at the speed of Paul Gordon (if you know him). The project leader was sitting with us, and answered a question or two that came up that he knew a better answer to than I did. It was a bit of a whirlwind of information. Afterwards though, when Shneiderman had moved onto the next lab, our big boss Supervisor / Professor asked how it went, and my project leader said that I had given a very good presentation and that I was a very good speaker. That made me feel really good.
After a lunch excursion into the village (because the cafeteria was completely closed), we went to the Plateau (the campus on top of the hill) to see Ben Shneiderman's talk. All kinds of people were there - even some people I know. I felt like part of a community. Shneiderman presented all kinds of interesting things, including treemaps (which I've seen several times in Bioinformatics). It was a really good talk.
So that's my brush with fame. Pretty darned cool really.
I hadn't slept well the night before (getting to bed late, getting up early) so I had me a double coffee. And I was at the lab super early getting the last things of the demo ready and setting up. Practicing my spiel. Boy oh boy the adrenaline was going strong. But the coffee was working so well that my thoughts were incredibly scattered and going a mile a minute. I couldn't slow down...
Anyways, I gave my presentation. All the years of CAVE demos and then Touch-table presentations seemed to pay off. I had to explain a lot and show a lot in about 10 minutes - maybe at the speed of Paul Gordon (if you know him). The project leader was sitting with us, and answered a question or two that came up that he knew a better answer to than I did. It was a bit of a whirlwind of information. Afterwards though, when Shneiderman had moved onto the next lab, our big boss Supervisor / Professor asked how it went, and my project leader said that I had given a very good presentation and that I was a very good speaker. That made me feel really good.
After a lunch excursion into the village (because the cafeteria was completely closed), we went to the Plateau (the campus on top of the hill) to see Ben Shneiderman's talk. All kinds of people were there - even some people I know. I felt like part of a community. Shneiderman presented all kinds of interesting things, including treemaps (which I've seen several times in Bioinformatics). It was a really good talk.
So that's my brush with fame. Pretty darned cool really.