Tales of Home [7]

Eldorion wrote:So hey, halfy (and our other NY peeps ... I think DJH and Raddy?), I'm gonna be in Manhattan in July. Going there for the NY Tolkien Conference on Saturday 7/16. Would love to hold a Forumshire meet-up of our own if you're available.

https://newyorktolkienconference.com

Have you submitted a paper? Haven't seen anything with your name show up yet on the program.

No, I was planning on submitting and had a bunch of notes, but it was causing me too much stress and distracting me from my original goal (submitting something for publication in a peer-reviewed journal) so I ended up not. Part of the reason was that they changed the allotted time for reading papers from 40 minutes (which it was last year) to 20 minutes and that kinda discouraged me. Plus I'm just a wreck, y'know.

chris63 wrote:

halfwise wrote:So you're not a native Aussie, Chris?  Were you 'transported'?

Set off on a black Friday 1981 and arrived on Valantines Day.

Do you feel more Ozzy or English? would you recommend emigrating to Oz?

Eldorion wrote:No, I was planning on submitting and had a bunch of notes, but it was causing me too much stress and distracting me from my original goal (submitting something for publication in a peer-reviewed journal) so I ended up not. Part of the reason was that they changed the allotted time for reading papers from 40 minutes (which it was last year) to 20 minutes and that kinda discouraged me. Plus I'm just a wreck, y'know.

are we still having the Forumshire Moot?

As far as I know. I'm gonna be there and I believe halfy is planning to as well.

Nothing to stop me. But Eldo, 20 minutes is actually a lot of time, but not so much you have to go far overtime to prepare. Actually, science and Tolkien should be my bailiwick, but I'm always incredibly busy over the summer. Unless something obvious strikes me I'll just show up.

According to my minimal amount of research 20 minutes of reading a paper would be only 3000 words. They're apparently trying to have less paper readings and more interactive presentations, though. Dunno if they'll succeed at that.

EDIT: my point being that 3000 words doesn't seem like enough for a real academic paper but I'm not sure what I have to say that's less esoteric but still worth anyone's time.

Just as an exercise, you might try taking something you've already written and editing it down to 20 minutes. It's funny, but you can often communicate more in 20 minutes than in 50. (You can sustain your enthusiasm better when the audience isn't nodding off, as they often are after the half hour point.)

{{{And if it happens to gel into something interesting, then why not go for it? }}}

Let's just say I've been behorsed quite a bit recently (on-and-off) and my earlier optimism about the idea of presenting was during a one of the non-grass-eating periods.

{{{Also, the deadline for this conference was June 1. I had a bunch of notes and stuff and only made the decision to stop trying to shape them into something I was happy with on May 31. }}}

Mrs Figg wrote:

chris63 wrote:

halfwise wrote:So you're not a native Aussie, Chris?  Were you 'transported'?

Set off on a black Friday 1981 and arrived on Valantines Day.

Do you feel more Ozzy or English? would you recommend emigrating to Oz?

I would imagine Oz would be quite nice if...they got rid of all poisonous, man killing, death dealing, creatures !.
That includes spitting insects, mammals & foliage !!

David H wrote:Just as an exercise, you might try taking something you've already written and editing it down to 20 minutes. It's funny, but you can often communicate more in 20 minutes than in 50. (You can sustain your enthusiasm better when the audience isn't nodding off, as they often are after the half hour point.)

{{{And if it happens to gel into something interesting, then why not go for it? }}}

Yep, the worst thing you can do is think of an oral presentation as anything like an academic paper.  10 minutes gives you time to spit out main ideas.  20 minutes gives you time to do that and have fun with it.  50 minutes means you can go into the kind of details that puts people to sleep.  When doing an oral presentation, your content is secondary to your audience.  In fact, I think of the content as just a theme you riff on in order to entertain the audience.  This is hard to get yourself to do when you've put in a lot of work that you're proud of and you want to show it off.  But if you distance yourself from your own work and think "How can I make a fun talk out of this" rather than "how can I get all my ideas across" then you'll have a memorable talk.  Getting ideas across can be entertaining, but you have to think of it as entertainment first.

Just lessons from teaching high school.  Never, never, never mix up the styles and purpose of written and oral presentations.

June 1 deadline, huh?  I guess my embryonic musings on the size and aerodynamics of great eagles will have to wait for another venue.

azriel wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:

chris63 wrote:

halfwise wrote:So you're not a native Aussie, Chris?  Were you 'transported'?

Set off on a black Friday 1981 and arrived on Valantines Day.

Do you feel more Ozzy or English? would you recommend emigrating to Oz?

I would imagine Oz would be quite nice if...they got rid of all poisonous, man killing, death dealing, creatures !.
That includes spitting insects, mammals & foliage !!

 yeah they are definitely not fair dinkum, I would add men in cork hats to that list.

{{{Another surprisingly stunning day today, went for a short drive after work and got some photos along the way (most of them out the car window as we sped by }}

{{Holy Loch}}

















{{{Kilmun Church- small but very old - http://www.historickilmun.org/ }}}



{{Farm at the head of the Loch, for Dave}}



{{comes with a decent acreage of very fertile land- of which this is just a part}}}

I think you got a snap of a Kelpie there, siting on that log in the water.

Im fond of the shingle one, with the glinting pool of sea water

{{{Looks like our good weather is about to break in spectacular fashion! Hot and muggy and humid Posted 45 minutes ago on my facebook, and yes I'm under that, or will be within the hour at least }}}

It looks so friendly and fluffy from a distance though.

Anything that highly developed could be rain. But rain actually tends to reduce mugginess if that's what you have - pulls the water vapor out of the air.

{{{{I'd never noticed that before! }}}

Lovely really, there's so much more than just a twee village

and they were never seen again........ ....lost in the Brigadunoon.

azriel wrote:

azriel wrote:

If you take away Norway from the map, you will also see Sweden and Finland for what they really are...