If I were a funding-agency, I would “throw money at her problem”. Very professional presentation & apparently a worthy project. The Mobile Media technology tools I have are looking for a “star”: someone who can maximize the visual nature of the medium. She is on my short-list, & there are other women at the conference who qualify (Rachel Bean/Cornell also had a similar killer presentation). I think this is where female-researchers can make a real contribution, to bridge the gap to the Public. Science needs a “face” the Public can relate to, just like Carl Sagan did it via the “Johnny Carson show”. Ironically, R. Feynman shunned it as idiotic. I heard some of C. Sagan’s colleague disapproved of his foray into “Entertainment”.

2 words: “Entertainment Value”. Like it or not, that’s the Reality of the World. I think Sean has star quality: looks & outgoing personality (he’s worked with A. Olinto, & she gave him a good reference). If he’s coming to Caltech, then maybe I have a “male” entry to the list of “stars”. I was just at Caltech Public Relations Dept, & they have a good setup in that area.

Joanne, thanks for your feedback. I did at SUSY ‘06 what I do at Offroad Races, which was stimulated by Steve McQueen’s attempt with his ill-fated movie “Lemans”:

“We wanted to bring the atmosphere of auto racing [ in this case, a Science Conference ] to the Public”

[ it was a critical box-office failure, BTW. It failed to "tell a story" a well known Hollywood director/producer (2-time Emmy Award winner) told me ]

I was using visual-content (pics, videos, QTVR) to give a viewer a *feeling* of what it’s like “to be a Scientist”. I see CV (for me at least) an insight to “A Day in the Life of Physicist”..pretty interesting. Just like you posted that pic of 3 women in a jam-session @SLAC (where a young girl commented “they must be working hard, since 1 of them is still in her pajamas”!), Science definitely has a Public Image/Perception problem. Like Offroad Racing, Science is a *niche market*, which lacks an effective PR/Marketing Program. If Particle Physics had a public *connection*, then possibly when the SSC was cancelled

[ due to fiscal irresponsibility by the Fools in Washington, "there may be some countries who can do esoteri Research, but this country is not one of them"..said that women politician. Recall Carl Sagan's comment on COSMOS when a Landsat image of Washington DC was shown: "No sign of Intelligent Life" ]

a public-outcry MIGHT have brought it back. These mobile-media tools lets ANYBODY (incl scientist attendees) to give a “roving point-of-view” of a Science conference. The female scientists can play a leading role, since they generally have a flair in their personality. (Men can be boring, in general). I.e., it may be more attractive to the Public. A. Olinto’s talk was superb, especially when she seamlessly inserted humor (& reference to Brazilian soccer & World Cup). Joanne is a St. Louis baseball fan, & I just noticed S. Hossenfelder is a soccer-fan as well.

I mean, who would think some brainy scientists (especially women) are rabid sports-fans? If this “story” is brought to the Public, then the “Gap between layman & Scientist” disappears. All of a sudden Scientists are no longer viewed as “their heads are in the clouds” (description of R. Feynman, when the Physics Dept considered him to start an Initiative in Undergraduate Teaching..which of course led to the famous Feynman Lecures on Physics), & are “brothers/sisters” that the Public can relate to. That can only mean good things for future Science Funding.

“If you build it [ baseball Stadium], they [ masses ] will come”
– Field of Dreams

Proceedings are useful primarily because they often represent the canonical papers in the literature. Many of the important GR conferences from the 60s and 70s, for example, had results published in their proceedings which are difficult, if not impossible, to find elsewhere.

There’s also the little matter of authors often being paid a healthy stipend for their contribution to the proceedings, but I digress.

I have videos from LHC Thu evening plenary-session (3 different video-cameras). I need to prioritize the video uploads I’m doing, so I need some feedback on which videos you want to see 1st. “Naturalness” or LHC? I have Leonard Susskind’s talk on video. Unfortunately, it looks like I forgot to hit the record button for A. Linde & B. Richter’s talk!! (there is a chance I have the tape, & I’ve misplaced them).

1) real-time WebCasting (digital SLR..some were flash pics, some weren’t, mobile devices w/pic & video capability)

2) mobile devices w/camera & video), video-delivery (video-blogging..the base for video-pocasting)

There was no set program (so don’t fault Dr. Feng)..I was doing a *test*, the next attempt will be done better. I will note your feedback on “flash photography” distraction. Note that there were UCI grad students who were also doing flash-photography. Some speakers were incredibly hard to photograph well (constantly moving, hard to catch a neutral or smiling face), I had to keep doing the flash-photography until I got a pleasing shot. Sorry, about any annoyance. It’s possible to do non-flash photography, but the pics don’t look as good.

There are always some kind of “exposition type” photos for conference: speaker head shots, speaker next to podium, even a group shot (what amazed me that wasn’t arranged for SUSY ‘06). I think mobile video-clips of Q&A (uploaded within a few minutes) are useful for outside web viewers. I tested 3 different mobile video devices (15-30 min turnaround to a video-clip on a video-podcast), & I isolated the best one.

Proceedings (old-fashioned paper) is useful to me, I still can’t read a technical-paper (for my own research) over a PDF. I need to have pen&paper scribbing notes on white-paper (”Gutenberg” still lives on!). There’s an interesting Fellow at USC Annenberg, Bob Steinb. He’s advocating an electronic medium to replace books. Remember CVJ’s post on a meeting of USC profs to discuss “how to use Blogging Technology”..I don’t know if Bob Stein was in attendance. I met him way back in ‘93 @AFI (American Film Institute) in Hollywood, where he was an invited speaker as Voyager founder (? CD was just beginning to start the multimedia revolution) founder. Back then, he was advocating the laptop as replacing the book.

The video-podcast Technology I was demo’ing, could very well be *another* medium to replace books. Podcasting is VoD (”Video on Demand”), where you can watch (in this case a lecture) WHEN you want, WHERE you want. The niche time-splice is the “dead-time” during a typical day: commuting (bus, car travel), walking around, etc. They have audio-tapes, you play while you drive..so with iPod compatible car radios (Mercedes, Toyota, Ford..are all doing it), you can listen to the Naturalness panel-session while you drive-commute. The MIT Media Lab & NYU Media Lab have research programs into this area of “Immersive Technology”. I know people in both these labs, & have contacted them already.

I need other people to chime-in on feedback, postive (”+”) or negative (”-”)..don’t be shy. The whole purpose of me being there, was to do a TEST. What works, & what doesn’t. I learned a LOT. I will be filing a report to Dr. Feng & Organizing Committee, so future SUSY conferences will have a comprehensive package of media-tools (to foster Collaborative/Cooperative Research & enhance web-delivery of conference talks).

And unlike video, I don’t think stills of physicists standing next to podiums usually give much idea of what they are trying to communicate.

One further mystery, if now we have practically full video coverage of the conference and the parallel talks are archived as pdf, what is the use of proceedings?

T

You’re right, the new mobile devices (”smaller, cheaper, faster” are creating this new horizon of cost-effective “mobile media solutions”. The term “citizen journalist” is generating a LOT of excitement in the Video-blogging community, they are really anti-Establishment (mainstream Media sucks, scientists know this all-too-well..they generally mess-up Science reporting). It’s the “Distributed Architecture” model (”an army of insects..citizen journalists”) VS “Centralized” Architecture (a few large conglomerate media organizations). Just like Insects are the Dominant life-form on Earth (numbers x weight = superiority), the mobile-blogging video-blogging (mobile sense, & near real-time) are giving the Power of Journalism to ANYONE. Just like the Mac revolutionized Desktop Publishing (”anyone can be a publisher”, from their apartment), Desktop Video (Mac is a force), Desktop Computer Animation (Mac & PC rendering-farms) are all trends that are delivering Computing Power to the Individual.

“He who controls the media controls our mind and controls our truth.”
“He who controls the media, controls the people.”

With blogging-scientists (text blogs), & now my “demo/prototype” of near-LIVE photo/video blogging at SUSY ‘06, I expect that the “insect drones” of Scientists will take this tool & conquer Public Igorance. Report Science as it really IS, & make some powerful moves in Public Outreach.

Could be a new-dawn in Science Funding, if the Marketing/Public-Relations is done RIGHT. “The Planetary Soceity” (Dr. Bruce Murray/Caltech/JPL & Carl Sagan & others) was the old-fashioned way: a snail-mail delivery of information (as part of the Content/Distribution model). An organzation, solicitation of public funding, bumper stickers, etc. Something like the Sierra Club (environmentalist advocates), they do it really well.

With the Web/Internet & mobile device solutions I demonstrated, there is a “Agile, Mobile, Hostile” solution that is revolutionzing the way people Network & News is delivered. Check out Tim Berners-Lee (more here), whose Web revolution was based on a CERN initiative. I seem to be following his steps. BTW, my former boss (UIUC) was Mark Andreesen’s boss (NCSA Mosaic, of Netscape fame). Internet Explorer came about indirectly thru a startup company called Spyglass (Scientific Visualization, an NCSA topic), so UIUC had a hand in 2 of the major web-browsers for the WWW.

[Chimpanzee stuff appended from another place: -cvj]

(doesn’t have to be the 5G iPod, i.e. w/video capability..it can be a Nano, or any earlier generation iPod) to download the audio-clip. Then, listen to it at your leisure (on the bus commute, like CVJ does). This is the beauty of the podcast (Video or Audio on Demand..you listen to it WHEN you want, WHERE you want), you can listen to it during “dead time”: bus, airplane (killing time @airport), at the park w/your kids, etc. T. Plehn pulled out his Nano iPod, & told me “I never leave home without it”. A. Olinto had to fly to a Neutrinos conference (right after her Thu morning talk, she told me her daughter has a video iPod), so she technically could have used her air-travel time productively. F. Wilczek told us about the tiresome nature of extensive travel (R. Sundrum told me about jet-lag, & missing the end of the “Naturalness” panel..had to goto bed). Well, with podcast (audio & video) he really didn’t miss anything! He could have caught up with the sessions on the way back to Johns Hopkins on airplane..via podcast.

I think this new “mobile media solution” could be a key-factor, in bridging the gap between the Theorists & Experimentalists. One could do a “Point” & “Counterpoint” audio podcast, which is an argument for each camp. I got the distinct feeling (from the conference & above exchanges..”you’re missing the point”, each side said) that there is a Communication gap..people still don’t understand the opposing viewpoint. You can save a LOT of posts on blogs (”repetition of arguments”).

By LHC coming online next year, I expect these New Mediums (”mobile media solutions”) to be in full-force as a Research Tool. Also, as a way of delivering News (”citizen Journalist”), where Scientists can bypass the mainstream-Media (”Science challenged”) & do their own reporting & Public Outreach.

Remember, Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of “http” protocol, now at CSAIL MIT) was hired by CERN to bridge the communication gap between groups within CERN. BTW, my PhD research was in this area (Computational Theory of Vision). There is an interesting analog between this area (classic ill-conditioned problem, where constraints like “Smoothness” were introduced..it has a strange similarity to “Naturalness”) to the issues above. Astronomy & Geophysics have the same issues above where data is hard-to-get, & are using MLE (Maximum Likelihood Estimators) like MED (Maximum Entropy Deconvolution) & Lucy-Richardson algorithm: it’s based on apriori assumptions (”throw in a constraint”), & invoke Bayes famous theorem (involving conditional probablity). I will make a post later in this thread about it.