Welcome to another bright and shiny instalment of GrubLord's travelogue! It's back, larger than life and twice as ugly. I can't commit to a daily schedule, I don't think: that seems to lower the quality more than I'd like, and besides, it takes me a bit of time to code these posts what with the pictures and all. Nevertheless, however, I'm going to try keep this up once per day. Let's see how long it lasts this time, eh? Here comes Day 5...
Day 5 - In which Liv concludes his scientific duties
The next day, of course, followed on shortly from the last. One might
even say there was never really a break: one moment I was working frantically
to finish stuff in my hotel room, the next I was working frantically to
finish stuff in the SNM computer hall. Seemingly mere moments after that,
I was presenting - talking at breakneck pace over a freshly updated set
of slides, so as to try cover some
of the material
of my previous talk as well, at the request of the industry partner who
had missed the first one.
In short, my presentation went extremely well - at least by the standards
I had been taught to expect. That is to say, the vicious cross-examination
I was to receive at the end of my talk was remarkably benign, and all questions
were easily answered. Having been educated to expect top scientists to
'tear me a new one' with their incisive and insightful methods of asking
hurtful questions to drive me off, I found the whole proceedings to be quite
civilized. Perhaps unusually so.
 Unfortunately,
less people turned out than came to watch my earlier talk, and those people
who promised they would come to see my next one as well never materialised
- excepting of course our industry friend, Ash and Ben. Once again, all
of the other members of our group were nowhere to be seen.
As the additional
material I had to slot in went by, and I was able to return to the rehearsed
rhythm of the speech, I became quite serene about it all: here I was, doing
the last speech I would have to get through before my official involvement
with this conference would come to an end, I had my material all set, the
demo worked, and I knew exactly what to say. It was here that things became
somewhat enjoyable. After all, much of the other work in my session was
quite uninventive
compared to mine, and I was doing well. I played a tiny violin in my heart
at having been abandoned by the other members of the research group, but
what did it matter? Reports of my talk would all be positive, and I had
already received and incorporated these people's feedback, so it was no
big loss in academic terms.
After this speech, and the subsequent mild interrogation, there was a
brief lull. Although we were to move into another room to do some demos,
the moderator slotted in another speaker who had not gotten to do his talk
in a different session. This Korean scientist, whom I will not name here,
was a pretty fortunate pick to follow me, because the sheer unimpressiveness
of his work made all of us look better by contrast. In case he reads this,
I must say: it was clear he had worked hard, and it was probably not his
fault that he didn't have a great deal to work with. His work, however, came
across as quite uninspired: at the conclusion of his speech, practically
everyone in the audience piped up with their ideas of better ways to solve
his scientific problem... and the author was left mostly just making excuses
in response to questioning.
As such, vicariously, I also got to experience the other end of the conference
spectrum. Being faced with a stony audience of people who think they know
better than you do, and who are happy to see you fail. When they find something
to seize upon, academics are a bloodthirsty lot and more than happy to
tear each
other down. It's like a game: the speaker scores points for conveying his
work and hitting the right buzzwords to make it sound important, whereas
the audience scores points for toppling the speaker's precious science
like a house
of cards.
The thing is, as his whole presentation indicated, the author was simply
a man who had had a difficult situation to work with, found his own solution,
and thus benefited his country's healthcare system. He had come to SNM
to share this solution, and felt like he had to apologise for the flawed
nature of his work numerous times. Most of the audience were probably thinking
"Is that it? I could do a lot better than that!", but none of them
had done so, had they? This guy had done the work, succeeded (to some extent),
and made a positive impact on the state of nuclear medicine in his entire
country's healthcare system.
 It
was easy for us to mock him, on a scientific level. What he did could've
been done better: the answers were obvious, didn't he see that? What we failed
to note was that by acting and implementing a flawed solution, he had replaced
no solution with a solution, albeit not the scientifically or financially
optimal one.
At this point, I noted once again the problem of science
vs. practicality. It's easy to do the work in your head, or come up with
some fancy idea, and that garners you significant respect amongst your
scientific peers. Actually working directly to solve a problem, however,
if you can't produce some fancy-shmancy long list of references that supposedly
led
you to that solution, or don't use the latest, hottest technology... that's
extremely undervalued,
to the extent that no-one turns up to your talk, and you're lined up with
the young newcomers (like myself) and the old guys who think it's cutting-edge
to tell radiologists they could be using online services like Facebook.
Out of the talks in my session, more than one of them (including mine)
was only a prototype for the time being, doing no real people any real
good as of yet. One of them was on piecing two scans together, to join
the legs to the torso... which looked like the sort of thing we would've
done as a student assignment in my 4th-year Medicine courses. The 'online
tools for radiologists'
talk could've been
given by my brother, with just some cursory Googling beforehand as preparation
(besides, it included factual errors where he talked about networking -
errors I didn't
even get to point out
because I chose to start with an icebreaker question, and the mod only
allowed me that one).
Ironically, therefore, the talk we all considered by far the worst
in the list, was the only talk on science work that had made a real difference
to people's lives. In this case, on a national scale! Not to be preachy,
but I figure there's something wrong with the way science work is valued,
if people think that way.
That said, the speech also lost a great deal in delivery. It was like
he'd never used PowerPoint before.
When the demo session did come, I was set upon by some folks who wanted
to hear my spiel, and I basically adopted my Science in the City narrator
spiel until they started asking questions. When I realised the people talking
to me were themselves developers, I started discussing techniques with
them and generally talking shop. One good thing about conferences like
this is that you meet a lot of people who actually know what you're talking
about and ask you for details you've never been questioned on before, or
offer up their own experiences, which is very nice when you've been working
on your own and having to explain in detail or keep to yourself every little
thing you do. Being in a PhD, alas, is all about specializing: and the
more specialized you become, the less people can relate to what you do
most of the time.
 Anyway,
there wasn't much to the demo session. I talked a lot, and Syfro's phone
finally decided to start working again, so I was able to demonstrate the
web-based version of my app on both the iPhone and on Symbian OS, which
was good. Unfortunately, aside from a few interesting folks who came to
ask some questions, and a couple who just walked by and took a brief look,
we didn't really get many visitors. This gave me, Ash and Ben a bit of time
to scout the poster hall for interesting science and have lunch with our
new friend the industry rep.
After that, the day was lost to hedonism for Ash and Ben, and to fatigue,
shopping and clean-up for myself. Ben and Ash went off to see Toronto castle
and attend an SNM party at one of the glamorous hotels, whereas I gave
in to exhaustion, slept a whole lot, ate a fancy dinner with Ash and Ben,
looked around in the nearby shops for a new camera, cleaned up my exhibits
(which had to be removed by end-of-day), and then went back to sleep a
little footsore (having walked back and forth, so as not to use up my last
subway token, because I thought it looked cool and wanted to take it home).
For these reasons, the day was a bit of a blur for me. Having finished
my talks, resolved some of my sleep debt, etc., I felt liberated to go
do my own
thing for a bit,
and remember chasing some squirrels around with my camera, trying to get
a picture of them clambering up a tree. This, incidentally, is why I
was late for dinner with Ash and Ben. Darn, but those buggers are fast.
It wasn't until I actually did buy a new camera that I got any proper photographs
of squirrels. But that, as they say, is another story. |
Canada Post, Mark II
Ash: Once again, I must supply additional details.
GrubLord: Once again, your additional details sound like contradictions, but are really just pointless extras that add nothing to the recount. Thanks for playing, though. Here's a cookie.
Yarkin: I want to see you guys on Jerry Springer.
RJorb: This would be the most boring Jerry Springer episode ever.
Elo: well why don't we get Liv dressed up as a women (there you go Rjorb, a transvestite for you) and then get Ash's bro to be his illegitimate child who wants a sex change and it can be just like Jerry Springer....with Liv being the mother...somehow.... 
