It was time. Presentation day. It started earlier than I thought it would, as I accidentally got up at 630am, thinking it was 730am... Oh dear. At least it gave me time to run through my presentation in my head once more and write my diary of what happened on Monday. I was already starting to feel nervous, why? Well, I had to present in this room, the Great Hall.
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| The Great Hall at Imperial College |
Pretty big right? Much bigger than the room at TERMIS, the only glimmer of hope was that it was relatively quiet on Monday so hopefully it wouldn't be too full. Still, I got ready and headed out for the morning plenary. I had considered skipping it so that I could go through my slides, but I'm really glad I went. The talk was given by Proffessor D Walker and was talking about the interplay between academic research and industry and was an extremely candid account of his successes and struggles in industry and in trying to deal with conflicts of interests his work entailed. Prof. Walker was a fantastic speaker and I took loads of notes of hints and tips to look back on later.
Before my session kicked off there was a coffee break, and after feeling pretty calm in the plenary I was starting become more nervous again. After adequately caffinating myself I thought it might be a good idea to have some calming camomile tea (well it always worked for Peter rabbit), before heading to the great hall for the first 2 talks of my session. Let's just say the camomile tea didn't work, in the first 2 talks I didn't feel less nervous, but I did just want to get my talk over and done with and let whatever was going to happen, happen. During the questions section of the speaker before me, I got set up with a radio mic and got ready to go. I'm some ways it was strange, when I was announced and walked up onto the stage my nerves faded a bit. I was here now, I was on stage and I just had to get on and do it. So I got on with the show. Although I went through the slides a little quicker than I wanted to, I managed to say everything I wanted to say with only a slight bit of uming. The best thing was that my hand didn't shake too badly when I laser pointed at the screen which I like to think created the illusion that I was more together than I really was. The next hurdle was the questions. To be honest, this was what I was dreading the most. I was steeling myself for criticism. But I got lucky. The worst I got was a, "would a standard set up beat this?", something I could confidently answer with a no. The other question I possibly left myself open for and was about exactly how much easier our set up is to create, but I think I gave a good account of myself and explained how I might improve things in the future. With that I could escape relatively unscathed. On the whole, I think my talk went pretty well, I was better at TERMIS, but I also practised more and wasn't as worried about the audience. That being said I didn't crash and burn so I'll call that a result!
After my talk there were 5 more talks, they were good, but it felt like a very long time. Especially given my tea consumption. Unfortunately I didn't have any feedback coming out of the session as my supervisor ran to my lab mates talk straight after mine. But I got some at lunch, firstly from another lab mate saying it went well (phew!) then a really great bit of feedback. A conference delegate came up to me and thanked me for giving a good talk that he was able to follow, and contrasted it to the other talks. We then had a chat about how surprising it is no one has done my experiment before and he suggested it could be possible to look at putting motorised lenses in. That made my day, you can't really ask for more than that. If at least one person from outside my lab understood and enjoyed my talk I could go home happy. Unfortunately, I didn't get any feedback over lunch from my supervisor as he was busy talking to various people, but I assumed I'd he him later. I didn't know his departure time so I ended up missed him, but he passed in that he thought my talk went well so that's quite nice I suppose. In case you're dying for another lunch update, it was similar to Monday in terms of sandwich fillings but with fancier bread which made it hard to tell what you were getting, so I'll keep my rating at 2.5 out of 5.
After my talk there were 5 more talks, they were good, but it felt like a very long time. Especially given my tea consumption. Unfortunately I didn't have any feedback coming out of the session as my supervisor ran to my lab mates talk straight after mine. But I got some at lunch, firstly from another lab mate saying it went well (phew!) then a really great bit of feedback. A conference delegate came up to me and thanked me for giving a good talk that he was able to follow, and contrasted it to the other talks. We then had a chat about how surprising it is no one has done my experiment before and he suggested it could be possible to look at putting motorised lenses in. That made my day, you can't really ask for more than that. If at least one person from outside my lab understood and enjoyed my talk I could go home happy. Unfortunately, I didn't get any feedback over lunch from my supervisor as he was busy talking to various people, but I assumed I'd he him later. I didn't know his departure time so I ended up missed him, but he passed in that he thought my talk went well so that's quite nice I suppose. In case you're dying for another lunch update, it was similar to Monday in terms of sandwich fillings but with fancier bread which made it hard to tell what you were getting, so I'll keep my rating at 2.5 out of 5.
The first talk after lunch was 'How to get Published' and I was in two minds about whether to go or not because I've been to 3 how to get published talks in the past and, well, they haven't got me published! I made a few notes, but it wasn't a world altering talk so maybe it was a good gentle warm up after lunch activity. We then had 2 more talks sessions to go to, firstly I went to another session in biomedical techniques where I heard about some interesting technologies for live microscopy. They were pretty cool and looked at imaging cells in zebra fish, so the idea was that this could help with drug development studies. However, I would question that, as if I've learnt one thing from my tissue engineering studies it's that as animal testing isn't that effective! 3d models in the lab with lots of cell types is the way to go if you ask me. My final session of the day was all about new imaging techniques, which I chose as the most relevant set of talks out of a lot of things I don't really do. I learnt a couple of things, but not anything useful in my project, but that's the thing with conferences, you have a few relevant things and a lot of irrelevant things and I can't complain as I've had over a day of relevant talks, much more than at TERMIS. So, the art for the rest of the conference with be working out tangentially relevant talks to go to, or just going to what seems interesting to broaden my horizons, and I'll let you know how that goes later. Right now I think I need a sit down with a good book.
(The Lies of Locke Lamora, if you're not reading it read it I've told you enough times. Oh. If you're under 18 you possibly shouldn't... But still make sure you get a copy when you're old enough. I should shut up. I'm rambling, see, this is what conferences do to you!)
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