a recap of two stellar conferences
The weekend of February 8th I went to Los Angeles to give my paper ‘On Maximal Rationality’ at the UCLA/USC Graduate Conference. February was a crazy month; so, I wasn’t able to ever find the time to post about it. Well, today I got back from Pittsburgh and the Pitt/CMU Graduate Conference (where I also gave ‘On Maximal Rationality’). I think it’s time to post some thoughts about both conferences.
First, UCLA/USC:
The weather was amazing–especially since two days earlier it was below zero in Lincoln. The talks were top-notch as well. My favorite was Malte Willer’s talk about Thony Gillies’ update semantic work on Moore’s paradox. Not only was the paper impressive, but the LaTex pdf show was beautiful. Sara Bernstein’s talk was also quite good. I won’t comment on my talk other than to say that I think that it went fairly well.
Judy Thomson was the keynote. She was talking about the paradigm Phil 106 problem: The Trolley Case. She argued that perhaps the literature made a mistake in the beginning by assuming that it was permissible to divert the trolley in order to save the five. It was interesting, but I think that most consequentialists would balk at such a suggestion. It was very foot-stomping of her. She is a feisty lady, though, and no one wants to get in a sparing match with her. She was perfectly lovely after the talk and at dinner.
I also should say that the conference was very well run. Eileen Nutting, Lewis Powell, and Julia Staffel did particularly good jobs. Overall, an excellent experience.
Second, Pitt/CMU:
The weather wasn’t amazing. But the rest of it made up for the bad-ish weather. Bas van Fraassen was the keynote, and he was cool enough to come to the welcome party on Friday night. He is a very interesting guy who is very candid. At the welcome party I met for the first time fellow bloggers Shawn Standefer and Ole Hjortland. They were talking most of the night about logic; since I’m a dummy about such things I stayed out of it (sounded interesting though).
The talks were very good as well. My favorite student talk was Ole’s (again, although I’m a dummy about such things). I also really enjoyed Gordon Belot’s talk about geometrical possibilities. Van Fraassen was also very interesting. He was also remarkably clear. I wish I had that talent. Hopefully I will some day. I guess that’s a big part of why one should present at these things. Again, I will refrain from extensively commenting on my presentation. I actually think I did worse in Pitt than I did in LA. I also think I disappointed a few people (apparently the referees really liked the paper). If that is the case, then I am sorry! I tried. Again, working on presentation skills is a big virtue of going to grad conferences. I think I need to use powerpoint. Especially after seeing another beautiful LaTex presentation courtesy of Ole. Hopefully that will happen in Austin next month.
Pitt/CMU was also very well run. I especially thank Ben Jantzen and Kathryn Lindemann. Without those two I would not have gotten anywhere. Thanks!
I also converted to powerpoint after my first few grad conference presentations. I’ve found it a great help.
Hi Errol…Just thought I’d ask, “Did you only read your paper?” I just presented at the SSP conference using PowerPoint. I came to the opposite conclusion about PowerPoint and wished I had read my paper. Though the feedback I received was that the slides worked well (weren’t distracting, looked professional,a good summary of talking points) I was not able to deliver my talk with the level of precision possible if I had read my paper. The upside of PowerPoint is it forces you to get comfortable enough to be able to talk about your thesis well. The process of creating the slides is also valuable for tightening your presentation. However, it requires more time because you have to practice your presentation a lot. I’d like to throw out the following suggestion:
* A multi-media approach to philosophy presentations is best.
* PowerPoint - Good for quotes, graphs, pictures. Good for engaging an audience.
* Reading Paper - Good for accuracy.
* Drawing on Board - Good for concepts best explained visually.
* Handouts - Good for outlining arguments, talking points.
I think, if possible, incorporating all four elements into a presentation makes for an accurate yet engaging presentation.
Aidan,
I definitely think powerpoint will help keep things organized. Plus, making a nice looking presentation makes the talk more enjoyable, at least for me.
Christopher,
I didn’t read my paper. It’s about 23 pages in its current form, which would be too long to read in 35 minutes. In the past I’ve read the papers, and I’ve always felt like the audience zones out. Certainly it’s the easiest way to get all of the arguments accurately on the table, but if people aren’t going to pay attention it isn’t worth it.
I have always used handouts, though. Those help the audience keep up very well. When I go to powerpoint I will still use handouts. I also write on the board from time to time to put stuff up that didn’t fit on the handout. I think, though, that I will stop that practice and just start putting that stuff into the powerpoint.
I like your proposal; it’s just I think that reading the paper isn’t very effective in engaging the audience, which I think is the most important part of the talk. You won’t get good comments unless people follow the whole thing; so, you have to engage them throughout.
[...] at UT, Austin. It was a well-run event with good presentations and discussions. I wrote a comment elsewhere about how good presentations involve multi-media elements. At one level, the goal of a good [...]
[...] Relation.’ This was quite the event. I had a blast. I wrote up a recap of the first two here. I wrote up a recap of the UT conference here. ‘On Maximal Rationality’ was also [...]