Panelling Isn't Only for the Den
Jan. 17th, 2006 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursangnomeJust before Arisia, I mentioned my panel schedule. While the con overall was rather a mixed bag for me, the panels went reasonably well, and I found them interesting...
The Shape of The Universe - This one ended up, as expected, to be a one-hour overview of the current theories about how our Universe is put together. There was a bit of an odd dynamic here, as the panelists formally trained in the subject were reasonably conservative - we tended to stick to the standard models, while the moderator was a proponent for the idea that the standard model is pretty much junk, and will be replaced by something more exotic in the near future.
I tried (and I think mostly succeeded) to avoid the jargon-trap, and kept my points worded as if my audience had no background on the topic at all, and it seems from the feedback I got afterward that this was a good choice. Mind you, talking about "Dark Matter" without jargon is easy, when compared to trying to discuss the inflationary model or "Dark Energy", especially without any visual aids to assist.
In the Year 2525... - While it was Sunday afternoon, this panel was better attended then I expected. There were three panelists - myself, the moderator, and a last-minute replacement. The moderator (Terry Franklin, who was a participant on the previous panel with me) did a fine job of balancing between us and the audience, and tended to keep his own comments to a strategic minimum. That left most ot the talking to myself and the last-minute lady, who happened to be a physician. Between the two of us, we had solid coverage of the technical side of topics that seemed to be of interest to the audience.
We rather quickly moved from, "The near future should look pretty much like now," to, "The far future is too distant to predict with any confidence," and finally to, "The medium future strongly depends upon global economy and politics." Our focus fell on the USA and China, but India and Africa also came under discussion. Unfortunately, I think we wound up more talking about what might affect the development of technology more than what the technology would actually be. That was in large part due to audience input, though, so while we didn't stick right on topic, we seemed to give them what they wanted.
Staying Local - In which your truly was the small fry, and rather superfluous. Moderated again by Terry Franklin, the other panelists included Joseph E Palaia (Co-Founder of The 4Frontiers Corporation, focused on the settlement of Mars), Ian Randal Strock (Co-founder of The Artemis Project, focused on commercial development of the Moon), and Dr. Geoffrey Landis.
Dr. Landis has a list of credentials for this panel longer than my arm - Principle Investigator on Mars Pathfinder, a specialist on propulsion systems, one of the few men NASA has ever paid to do research on interstellar travel, and the list goes on. He could quite legitimately be a one-man panel, but he's far too polite, open, and interested in discourse to take the stage too blatantly.
So, this panel had a whole lot more of me listening, rather than talking. It isn't like I could improve on Dr. Landis' science, and the man clearly knows how to talk to a non-technical audience. So I mostly sat and listened, giving the occasional opinion when it seemed appropriate. I hope I managed to look like an intelligent being, but my trying to talk on the subject to someone like Dr. Landis would be a serious case of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.
That being said, the panel (and the one with Dr. Landis on interstellar travel I attended just before) were both intensely interesting. We didn't focus much on the technologies used to get around the solar system, in favor of instead thinking about the various reasons for going to particular places. Strock favors the Moon for it's tourist possibilities, Palaia favored Mars as the best settlement opportunity. Landis is a booster for the asteroids as the one place where profit potential is really clear. I, myself, figure that a Moon/Asteroids combination is most favorable - I'm not convinced the Moon alone is economically viable in the medium term, but the asteroid plan could be made much easier by a big Moon base of operations.
None of us strongly favored the outer solar system as a reasonable goal anytime soon, and Mercury didn't come up as a target. Dr. Landis had some thoughts on Venus that I heard him give at Worldcon, which are just kind of fun, if not clearly profitable.
The Shape of The Universe - This one ended up, as expected, to be a one-hour overview of the current theories about how our Universe is put together. There was a bit of an odd dynamic here, as the panelists formally trained in the subject were reasonably conservative - we tended to stick to the standard models, while the moderator was a proponent for the idea that the standard model is pretty much junk, and will be replaced by something more exotic in the near future.
I tried (and I think mostly succeeded) to avoid the jargon-trap, and kept my points worded as if my audience had no background on the topic at all, and it seems from the feedback I got afterward that this was a good choice. Mind you, talking about "Dark Matter" without jargon is easy, when compared to trying to discuss the inflationary model or "Dark Energy", especially without any visual aids to assist.
In the Year 2525... - While it was Sunday afternoon, this panel was better attended then I expected. There were three panelists - myself, the moderator, and a last-minute replacement. The moderator (Terry Franklin, who was a participant on the previous panel with me) did a fine job of balancing between us and the audience, and tended to keep his own comments to a strategic minimum. That left most ot the talking to myself and the last-minute lady, who happened to be a physician. Between the two of us, we had solid coverage of the technical side of topics that seemed to be of interest to the audience.
We rather quickly moved from, "The near future should look pretty much like now," to, "The far future is too distant to predict with any confidence," and finally to, "The medium future strongly depends upon global economy and politics." Our focus fell on the USA and China, but India and Africa also came under discussion. Unfortunately, I think we wound up more talking about what might affect the development of technology more than what the technology would actually be. That was in large part due to audience input, though, so while we didn't stick right on topic, we seemed to give them what they wanted.
Staying Local - In which your truly was the small fry, and rather superfluous. Moderated again by Terry Franklin, the other panelists included Joseph E Palaia (Co-Founder of The 4Frontiers Corporation, focused on the settlement of Mars), Ian Randal Strock (Co-founder of The Artemis Project, focused on commercial development of the Moon), and Dr. Geoffrey Landis.
Dr. Landis has a list of credentials for this panel longer than my arm - Principle Investigator on Mars Pathfinder, a specialist on propulsion systems, one of the few men NASA has ever paid to do research on interstellar travel, and the list goes on. He could quite legitimately be a one-man panel, but he's far too polite, open, and interested in discourse to take the stage too blatantly.
So, this panel had a whole lot more of me listening, rather than talking. It isn't like I could improve on Dr. Landis' science, and the man clearly knows how to talk to a non-technical audience. So I mostly sat and listened, giving the occasional opinion when it seemed appropriate. I hope I managed to look like an intelligent being, but my trying to talk on the subject to someone like Dr. Landis would be a serious case of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs.
That being said, the panel (and the one with Dr. Landis on interstellar travel I attended just before) were both intensely interesting. We didn't focus much on the technologies used to get around the solar system, in favor of instead thinking about the various reasons for going to particular places. Strock favors the Moon for it's tourist possibilities, Palaia favored Mars as the best settlement opportunity. Landis is a booster for the asteroids as the one place where profit potential is really clear. I, myself, figure that a Moon/Asteroids combination is most favorable - I'm not convinced the Moon alone is economically viable in the medium term, but the asteroid plan could be made much easier by a big Moon base of operations.
None of us strongly favored the outer solar system as a reasonable goal anytime soon, and Mercury didn't come up as a target. Dr. Landis had some thoughts on Venus that I heard him give at Worldcon, which are just kind of fun, if not clearly profitable.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 07:42 pm (UTC)And I know what you mean about the Staying Local panel -- reminds me of one I wound up moderating a couple of years ago on New Trends in Technology, sandwiched in between two science writers who knew *far* more than I did. I mostly spent my time managing audience questions on that one...