I wrote:
> The timeline for these video 1 is: > > 0:00 - 0:37 Mills theory blather. > 0:37 - 1:11 Demonstrations. Much more background noise. > 1:12 - 1:20 Mills business blather. Kind of ridiculous, in my opinion. . . > . > I sound judgemental here. Let me say that I have no objection to theory blather. I do not understand it, so I skipped over most of it. However, while I do not object to theory, I think there is a time and place for it, and this ain't it. David French said you should not include theory in a patent. I say you should not include it in a demo. No theory, no business strategy -- just do the demo. I say this because audience has a limited amount of time and attention. Sitting in chairs while you listen to physics lectures and observed experiments is *exhausting*. I have done it enough times. After the first hour you lose focus. Here are some pointers for demo. This is also good advice for teaching a technical course or showing customers how to use a product. This is the kind of advice you read in textbooks on teaching: Keep the message short, and focused. It should fit into a 1-paragraph abstract. Tell them what you are going to say, then tell them what you have to say, and then tell them again again what you just said. Do not wander off the topic or ad lib. Do not make many wisecracks. A few witticisms may help lighten the mood. Do not say anything controversial about some subject unrelated to the topic, such as politics. This will distract the audience. Start on time and stick to your schedule. If you are given 20 minutes, then make sure ahead of time that your entire demo will fit into 20 minutes. One of the amateur mistakes Defkalion made at ICCF18 was to spend all of their allotted time getting ready and blathering. Practice ahead of time, for crying out loud! Pay attention to production values. By that I mean, make sure your slides are large enough that everyone can read them. Use enough lighting so that everyone can see the equipment, including people seeing the video. Speak loudly and slowly. In a noisy environment (such as this one), used a noise-cancelling microphone, and have it connect directly to the audio track when you make a video. Consider adding some voice-over to the video later on, and perhaps some slides directly to video. A brilliant demo that no one can see or hear will do no good. I think Mills ignored several of these suggestions, so the demo did not work for me. If I had been him I would have: 1. Spent 10 minutes introducing the demo. Explain the instruments and what they will show. (What you hope they will show if it works.) Explain the expected results; i.e., there will be an explosion. The bomb calorimeter will show output energy. It will exceed input energy, and we know this is not from a chemical reaction for thus and such reasons. Show some slides of the equipment configuration. 2. Do the demo. Get right to it and keep the pace moving rapidly. Repeat the points made in step 1 as you perform steps. "This is the bomb calorimeter shown in Slide 3." You say as you display the slide and point to to the equipment. Zoom in the camera and point to the components. 3. After you finish, display the data from this test, and point to the interesting parts that indicate excess energy. Repeat the gist of the explanation. If you have lots more time that day, take a long coffee break, give the audience time to pee (always important!) and then reconvene for a session of theory blather, which you can relate back to the data they just saw collected. Do not keep people in their chairs for two hours. - Jed
