Well, the last couple of days events were tiring, but good overall. The Hawking event was a bit like a rock concert. I made a video of some of the long line for you, and also take you into Bovard Auditorium with me to see the rather nicely packed crowd (well the downstairs part) of about 1200 excited audience members. At the end of the video are a few stills, showing Dean Howard Gillman during his welcoming remarks to the College Commons event, Nick Warner introducing Stephen Hawking, the man himself, and some of the high school students and the undergraduate student, who won the prize to get to ask Stephen questions. (The high school students had all asked similar questions, and so were all asked up to ask one question.)
Here’s the video:
I’ll report more in a bit. Tired now.
-cvj
Thanks!
-cvj
Short redirect url:
http://college.usc.edu/hawking
“Exact” url:
http://capture.usc.edu/college/Viewer/?peid=68506f3b7eca4b95b7da0f29c6992354&CFID=81738&CFTOKEN=68212687
Hi, I do not know if the talk was captured by the IT team who broadcast it to the spill rooms and the web. We shall see.
-cvj
Thanks for a glimspe of the scence…i wasn’t able to make it and i was sick with regret. Did you tape the talk too?
Thanks for the video! I watched some of the webstreaming, but it was choppy, and I had to refresh my browser 11 or so times so quite after about 40 minutes. The stream had Hawking’s slides, too, which was nice, so took some screen shots. I was too slow to sign up for his talk AND for your followup, so sorry!
He did his usual show in the usual way. Sentences are perfectly fine in delivery (no 3s per word delays as you had), but sometimes there are long gaps between collections of sentences. However, people are patient, and wait patiently in more or less complete silence when there are gaps, which always impresses me (imagine an audience that size sitting silently waiting…). It seems to work fine with the assembled audience.
-cvj
Hawking is a great scientist. Which is obvious from the number of people turning up. However, I once went to a public lecture of his and I must say it was somewhat awkward. Perhaps he has updated the machine that allows him to speak; but at the time I saw him, he delivered perhaps one word every 3rd second or so. This made the entire show a bit strange and people clearly felt uncomfortable. In my opinion it would have been better if he recorded a talk, showed it with himself sitting on the stage. And then only for the questions & answers session let it go ‘real time’.
How did you do it at your event?