Today I realized that my initial idea of writing notes for my defense slides while writing my dissertation would have been a good idea. You always assume that because you write something yourself, it will be eternally present in your head. That is not true. While starting my defence powerpoint at my favorite coffee shop (where else?) I realized that not only did I have to look up what I have argued in my dissertation, I would probably have to read it closely again before the defense in order to revisit the background that I thought I would never forget. When was the term context-aware computing used first?, what exactly does Dourish say about coupling and why does Chalmers think that Dourish's embodied interaction is all about Heidegger? Oh no, I have to read some of my background articles again as well... So a good piece of advise to myself and others doing research: if you think it might be a good idea to write comments for a possible presentation when writing the paper, then do it! And by the way, does anyone have any idea of what a defense presentation should consist of? I don't and I am just improvising, trying to make it equally exciting for the part of the audience who have hardly heard about ubiquitous computing and the other part who have worked in my field for 20 years. That, I admit, is quite a challenge.
Posted by Louise at November 21, 2004 11:16 PM