Volunteer in HB2009

Healthy Building, 2009, the 9th International Conference and Exhibition

I volunteered as tech support from 8:30 am through 4:30 pm on Sep.16. I didn't have much to do actually, helping people to upload/modify their PPT files to the conference folder, saving the PPT file from conference folder to desktop of the PC in the session room. And most of the files had been uploaded already before this morning.

Attended 1 forum and 2 podium sessions. I was expecting something more interesting so I feel so disappointed and bored by those professional viewpoints which I totally have no idea about and dull statistic data. I have seen NOTHING interesting! Could they just use flash to show how the house preserves heat or the ventilation technique?

I met some Chinese scholars, both doing research in China or in US. Just so pity it isn't my interested area, or it is a great chance to "build network".

Conference organization can be improved in following aspects:

1. In the conference schedule brochure, the guideline for presentation says"Office 2003 will only be supported", but actually, all the computers provided there have installed Office 2007. And you can image that some speakers who need to use the computers to modify or print the presentation will have difficulty dealing with version 2007.

2. Conference schedule on the website is hard to read and save. They should provide a PDF version for people to download. (It's really bad if you can only show people a CLEAR schedule by giving them the brochure.)

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And I have to say it's interesting to observe people's presentation performance and I have some theoretical knowledge. What is more important is currently I have no such assignment!(I'm a bad presenter.)

So here are the points I'd like to mention:

1. Be familiar with content. I think most of the presenters are the paper authors and which means that they must be very familiar with the content they are presenting. So it's had to explain why some of them just read-off the screen.

2. Be confident. Both reading-off the screen and staying far from the audience without eye contact shows that the presenter is not confident with what he is talking about, or, he himself doesn't believe in his presentation.

3. Presentation organization is important. Simple rule as "not too many slides", "not too many words", "not too many pictures". Do NEVER expect your audience can obtain everything you puton the screen: they are not familiar with the research as you do. Putting too many words on the screen just places tough obstacles for them to read and understand. PPT with too many slides contains information unnecessarily or the information is discrete, distracting audience's attention.