NIST Trip
I'm off at NIST, playing my part in their Fire Conference. I got to give a short talk, then sit on a panel as a simulation software developer. Here are some pictures:
This one is of the main entrance to the building we were in. I don't know what's in the tall part - we were off to the left.
This is the hallway where you hang posters. Evidently, you hang flags there too. I don't know the meaning right off hand.
This was our poster in the hallway. Not much of a crowd. I think class was in session, or nearly, when I took this.
This was the room where I gave my talk and sat at a panel up front. It was about 2/3 full of fancy research people and building code enforcers and other serious responsible types. I felt like the talk could have gone better - I tightened up a bit and I think I came across as a bit more aggressive than I intended. I responded to some things from earlier talks and that took a bite of of my time, then I had to ditch some good stuff to stay on track. My buddies told me I did a good job after without saying anything creative so I think it went okay.
My only "panelist" response was to a non-question when one of the fathers of all of our evacuation data launched what I'm told is his regularly scheduled tirade against anyone who still uses an approach that's based on his data. I told him we didn't like it either, but as long as there's no alternative we're going to keep right on using it. *yawn*
Later that day, I managed to convince Brian to skip the last couple talks so we could go for a run. Then about 25 of the evac group went out to dinner at an Italian place. It was nice. I learned that today is Israel's birthday (an Israeli with brightly-colored hair made a toast).
Tomorrow is fire modeling day. Brian gets to give sort of a high-level business talk about the relationship between the NIST stuff and our stuff. I'm happy my hard part is done and I get to just sit around and talk to people.
EDIT: I forgot to mention. My garmin Nuvi (Karen - the Australian voice) hasn't been making any friends. She's been pretty slow to pick up satelites, but the real faith-destroying problem was pilot error. In Kansas, it works pretty well to leave it in shortest route mode, rather than fastest route. That works less well to escape Washington DC. She even tried to send us down a bike route at one point - not cool. Karen's done pretty well since I switched it over to fastest path mode, but the slow satellite acquisition time is still pretty damaging.
EDIT: Ooh, I almost forgot to mention - no slides for me. All of us panelists gave our talks old school, hard core. No visual aides at all.
This one is of the main entrance to the building we were in. I don't know what's in the tall part - we were off to the left.
This is the hallway where you hang posters. Evidently, you hang flags there too. I don't know the meaning right off hand.
This was our poster in the hallway. Not much of a crowd. I think class was in session, or nearly, when I took this.
This was the room where I gave my talk and sat at a panel up front. It was about 2/3 full of fancy research people and building code enforcers and other serious responsible types. I felt like the talk could have gone better - I tightened up a bit and I think I came across as a bit more aggressive than I intended. I responded to some things from earlier talks and that took a bite of of my time, then I had to ditch some good stuff to stay on track. My buddies told me I did a good job after without saying anything creative so I think it went okay.
My only "panelist" response was to a non-question when one of the fathers of all of our evacuation data launched what I'm told is his regularly scheduled tirade against anyone who still uses an approach that's based on his data. I told him we didn't like it either, but as long as there's no alternative we're going to keep right on using it. *yawn*
Later that day, I managed to convince Brian to skip the last couple talks so we could go for a run. Then about 25 of the evac group went out to dinner at an Italian place. It was nice. I learned that today is Israel's birthday (an Israeli with brightly-colored hair made a toast).
Tomorrow is fire modeling day. Brian gets to give sort of a high-level business talk about the relationship between the NIST stuff and our stuff. I'm happy my hard part is done and I get to just sit around and talk to people.
EDIT: I forgot to mention. My garmin Nuvi (Karen - the Australian voice) hasn't been making any friends. She's been pretty slow to pick up satelites, but the real faith-destroying problem was pilot error. In Kansas, it works pretty well to leave it in shortest route mode, rather than fastest route. That works less well to escape Washington DC. She even tried to send us down a bike route at one point - not cool. Karen's done pretty well since I switched it over to fastest path mode, but the slow satellite acquisition time is still pretty damaging.
EDIT: Ooh, I almost forgot to mention - no slides for me. All of us panelists gave our talks old school, hard core. No visual aides at all.
Comments
Sounds like things went well today. I think it is really hard to gauge how everything comes across when you are the one doing the presenting. I'm also impressed that that large room was 2/3 full!
Hope you have a great rest of the conference. Yay for getting your part out of the way.
Your fancy Italian place sounded good, too. We might need to go to fancy Italian when you get back!