I think all in all it went exceptionally well.
Thanks very much to Greg and Santokh (we enjoyed the chocolate, by the way) and to Sonja and everyone at MURC (for the free food, etc.)!
I’ve been to MURC twice before, courtesy of Yana, and while I thought the improv show was much more hilarious last year, here are my thoughts pertaining to our panel:
Our talks were all well timed in such a manner that we had discussion time left in the panel. Lsi, I think you could’ve used more practice to pinpoint timing, but I enjoyed your presentation nonetheless. It’s too bad MURC happened so soon right after the break, and of course, we procrastinated. *coughtimemanagementcough*
Unfortunately, there were some questions that I wish were asked, but were not, especially given the nature of the material. Topics like mine could have been elaborated so much more, and everyone else’s too. Not everyone got a chance to answer questions. I noticed that people I invited either came in early for the first part and left, or came in late and stayed, thus not seeing all of the talks. If we had more time, or broke up the presentations into two panels, that might have worked better. The people who left may have had questions for the earlier presenters.
But given we were pressed for 8 minute talks, we did the best we could. It was exactly what I signed up for, to actually get up and present, even if for a short time, to an audience (which looked full by the way!). I know that presentation skills are very important, to sell an idea whether it is a science project, a business model, a teaching method, a story, a product or whatever it may be.
I gained a sense of just how much information I can present in 8 minutes, and learned how to cut down a talk. I also learned how to speak without reading off slides, making sure to use visuals as a guide to make concrete abstrat concepts and direct the flow of the talk, especially since you need more words to describe what can just be shown. I also am reminded that Mircosoft Word is crap, because when I copied my proposal into the submission box, the apostrophes got screwed up. NOTE TO SELF: Copy to Notepad first.