Conferences

This post has a simple mission: stop making template-based “title + bullet point”-style slides for your presentation. Yes, most presentation software suggests this as a default, but that doesn’t make it any better. Instead, think about your slides as complementary to what you are saying. Auditory–visual perception Human perception is inherently multimodal, meaning that we continuously experience the world with all our senses. In a presentation, that means the audience is processing your voice, your slides, your gestures, and the room itself as part of one combined experience. ...

This semester, I have taught a new course at the Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo: MUS2640 – Sensing Sound and Music. Since I have been “bought out” to run RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion since 2018, I haven’t taught a regular class in many years. However, all my colleagues were busy with other things, and I thought it would be fun to engage with bachelor’s students again on a regular basis, so I took the challenge. ...

Recently, I shared some tips for conference presentations. Today, I’ll focus on conference poster presentations, a format that is especially common in STEM fields. What is a poster presentation? Let us start with the basics, since not everyone (for example, humanities researchers) is used to the concept of a “poster presentation”. In short, it involves displaying a large printed sheet (typically A0 or A1 size) on a designated poster wall during a dedicated conference session (typically 1–2 hours). Then you stand in front of your poster while attendees stop by to discuss your research. ...

The doctoral and postdoctoral research fellows sent a questionnaire to the PIs at RITMO the other day. The aim was to collect information about conference presentations. It was a great set of questions, so I am posting my answers here, a little more elaborated than in the questionnaire. Being nervous Have you ever been nervous to present at a conference? How did you cope with this? Yes, I have been nervous many times. My first conference presentation was nerve-wracking. I thought about it continuously for the last couple of weeks before I went there. My approach was to prepare as if it was a music performance. I remember repeatedly rehearsing the lecture in my hotel room the day before. The presentation was scheduled first on the last day of the conference, the day after the banquet, so very few people showed up. Still, the preparations were worth the extra effort; I was happy about my performance. ...

Today, I ran a workshop called Video Visualization together with RITMO research assistant Joachim Poutaraud. The workshop was part of the Digital Scholarship Days 2023 organized by the University of Oslo Library, four days packed of hands-on tutorials of various useful things. Presentation slides made by Jupyter Notebook Joachim has done a fantastic job updating the Wiki with all the new things he has implemented in the toolbox. However, the Wiki is not the best thing to use in a workshop, it has too much information and would create an information overload for the participants. ...

At the NordicSMC conference last week, I was part of a panel discussing the topic Rigorous Empirical Evaluation of SMC Research. This was the original description of the session: The goal of this session is to share, discuss, and appraise the topic of evaluation in the context of SMC research and development. Evaluation is a cornerstone of every scientific research domain, but is a complex subject in our context due to the interdisciplinary nature of SMC coupled with the subjectivity involved in assessing creative endeavours. As SMC research proliferates across the world, the relevance of robust, rigorous empirical evaluation is ever-increasing in the academic and industrial realms. The session will begin with presentations from representatives of NordicSMC member universities, followed by a more free-flowing discussion among these panel members, followed by audience involvement. ...

For the last couple of days, I have participated in the NordicSMC conference. It was organized by a team of Ph.D. fellows from Aalborg University Copenhagen, supported by the Nordic Sound and Music Computing network. UiO is happy to be a partner in this network, together with colleagues in Copenhagen (AAU), Stockholm (KTH), Helsinki (Aalto), and Reykjavik (UoI). Choosing a conference format When we began discussing the conference earlier this year, it quickly became apparent that it was unrealistic to meet in person. Restrictions have been lifted in most Nordic countries, but the pandemic is still ongoing. One option could have been to run it as an online-only conference. But since we are an adventurous group of researchers, we wanted to explore running it as a hub-based hybrid conference. Hybrid means that it was run both in-person and online. Hub-based means that there were multiple physical locations. This makes sense, given that there are five partners in the network. ...

The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) gathers researchers and musicians worldwide to share their knowledge and late-breaking work on new musical interface design. There are four tracks at the conference: papers, music performances, installations, and workshops. Each of these four tracks is represented in different ways, through text, audio, video, and so on. Currently, only conference papers are systematically structured and archived. This list is based on BibTeX source files hosted on GitHub. PDF files of each paper are stored on Zenodo, with proper metadata and DOIs. The challenge with this approach is that the PDFs do not allow for embedding audio and video; hence they provide a suboptimal presentation of typical NIME contributions. ...

Many people rely on what I will call linear presentation tools when they lecture. This includes software such as LibreOffice Impress, Google Presentation, MS PowerPoint, or Keynote. These tools are great for smooth, timed, linear lectures. I also use them from time to time, but mainly if I know exactly what to say. They are also good when I lecture with others, and we need to develop a presentation together. However, linear presentation tools do not work equally well for general teaching, where spontaneity is required. For example, I often like to take questions during lectures. Answering questions may quickly lead to a different presentation order than what I had originally planned. For that reason, I have explored different non-linear presentation tools. ...

There are many ways to run conferences. Here is a summary of how we ran the Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop 2021 at RITMO this week. RPPW is called a workshop, but it is really a full-blown conference. Almost 200 participants enjoy 100 talks and posters, 2 keynote speeches, and 3 music performances spread across 4 days. A group photo of RPPW2021 participants, taken in a Zoom Room before the last poster session. ...