My Writerly Blog

Second day of the conference, and what an interesting day it was. The schedule listed a slot at the very end for "prizes", which mystified us. Were there categories? Awards? Statuettes? I didn't know, so today I decided to award my own prizes based on my own arbitrary classifications. Awards included: -Most bizarre use of out-of-context visuals -Most enthusiastic/evangelistic about subject -Most in need of a lower primate prop -Most in need of screaming girls in the front row -Most creative "avoid having to actually talk" method -Most BS and pseudoscience packed into 15 minutes I think there were others, but they may have been too...er...adult-themed to post here. Anyway, I wound up taking first prize (official conference first prize, not my silly prizes for which there is no order) at the end of the day, sharing it with my fellow NIECI and New Media cohort (see our " Press Release "). Our supervisor will be stoked, and our Dir of P...

Gave my very first academic conference presentation today. It wasn't the best experience it could have been. The conference was put on by a student organization, and none of the organizers seemed to be very take charge. It was more as though they were absentee wedding planners – they planned the day, booked the room, and called the caterer, but they had no role whatsoever in the fall out of the events of the day. For the most part, they let the room fall fallow, the presenters to load their presentations onto the one computer willy-nilly. I was prepared, but I had to cue up a digital story to a certain point beforehand, and did so. Only to have an idiot of a keynote speaker trounce into the room as soon as I left and proceed to crash the computer. When I returned to try to sort out the problem, he treated me like a kindergartner and told me how many bajillion computers he runs all at the same time. BS. He couldn't even open his PowerPoint. He was a mixture of Tony Robb...