Author's Toolkit, Vol. 28, No. 1

電子情報通信学会の季刊誌「情報・システムソサイエティ誌」に掲載
Authorʼs Toolkit by Ron Read, Osaka Branch Manager
Published in IEICE INFORMATION AND SYSTEMS SOCIETY JOURNAL
Vol. 28, No. 1 ©2023 IEICE

About a year and a half ago, I discussed dealing with the need, due to the pandemic, to sometimes present online. After doing this a lot since then, let me briefly update my ideas.

Online Presentations Revisited

First, I really prefer presenting ‘face-to-face’ rather than online, although others have the opposite preference. Still, many organizations have recognized the clear advantages of online presentations: inviting participants regardless of location, saving transportation time and costs, and better accommodating tight schedules.

So regardless of the public health situation, it seems like the online revolution is here to stay. Previously, I mentioned the powerful tool Open Broadcast Software (OBS) for creating a very customized screen image.

Although this is great software, I now recommend keeping your computer setup as simple as possible, especially if someone else (e.g., conference organizer) controls the network. But OBS could be ideal in recording video for archives or YouTube. Another idea I mentioned was attaching a ¥100 mirror to your webcam with a rubber band to avoid a non-intuitive reverse-mirror image of yourself. But a bigger advantage of this is to orient your eyes toward the webcam, replicating ‘live’ eye contact with the audience; too often I see online presenters who look like nerds doing computer work while talking to themselves.

How you look on the screens of your audience may largely be out of your control, since viewers can minimize your image to a tiny box. If you’re using a recent version of PowerPoint or Keynote, you can put your live video image, via your webcam, right into a slide with the Cameo or Live Video feature, respectively. This is great for adding emphasis and audience contact.

A good use of a Cameo-like ‘visit’ by the presenter is a ‘breather’ slide between major parts of your presentation, when you take a moment to calmly summarize the last few slides of the presentation and set up what’s coming next. These allow the viewer to breath and relax between parts that are dense with info.

Along those lines, mix up slides showing text or tables with slides showing simplified graphics or photos, with only a few words. As in any presentation, your main job is not to convey information but to build interest in the work. Finally, invest a few thousand yen in a moderately priced clip-on mic. This provides much better audio quality—and thus listener experience—than your computer’s built-in mic.

Machine-Assisted Writing

The recent development of AI technologies like ChatGPT is raising much excitement. I’m often asked about using applications for checking over English text.

Such systems can be useful, and they’ve improved greatly. However, can they really be trusted for final checking of text? Such blind trust is still not warranted. Highly technical fields often use expressions differently from ordinary language, which could cause misinference and thus bad output.

Furthermore, these systems are aimed at native-English speakers able to understand complex suggestions in English. If you do not understand a system’s suggestion, do not take it, since faulty input can ‘snowball’ into confusion.

I suppose I’m biased as a human editor. But humans still write, or present, for other humans, and a human touch thus remains valuable.