I had agreed to write up my following experience a while back, but never finished. Finally got around to it this morning in a concerted effort to clear some blogging backlog.
Recently, I have been involved in a couple of situations where I had to pitch an idea in front of a panel of experts, survive their grilling questions and hope for a passing outcome. Not-so-small investments and recognition are involved, so these sessions are more high stakes than your everyday idea-pitches to your advisors, leads or management. Several people have told me these sessions are nicknamed "Mini PhD Defenses". I've never sat through a real PhD Thesis defense, so I really cannot comment on the comparison.
The first one is always nerve racking. How do you prepare for your defense? What kind of questions are they going to ask? In the end, what more can you do to prepare? You have to know the material you are preparing pretty well. Preparing an elevator pitch to showcase your idea really helps fine-tune the relevant points. In front of the panel, you really don't have time to go over the nitty-gritty details until cross-examination, so you want convey the key ideas across first and let the questions drive your technical detail discussions. I found I was spending more time researching other similar ideas in the field, so that I could answer the true money questions: What makes your innovation unique and different? What makes it relevant to others? What contributions to knowledge, profits, customer satisfaction, etc. are you bringing? Why should we invest? These are all asking the same thing in the end. If you cannot effectively answer these questions, go back and do some more homework. Also, try to expand your scope by thinking of ways to extend your ideas. This can come as other applications of your techniques or future work to be done.
When facing the panel itself, it can be a little intimidating. The panel is typically comprised of renown experts in their field. Typically, the sessions starts with general questions to allow you to sell your ideas. That elevator pitch I mentioned before is useful now. I typically follow the layout of an academic paper. Brief introduction, quick discussion of existing works and what makes the idea unique, description of the core idea, followed most importantly, by results. You have to make a good impression by the end of this section. I've sat in a few sessions where people did a poor job conveying their ideas. It's hard to get people excited if they don't understand or are bored.
The next section is the onslaught. The most feared moment of the entire session. I was a bit nervous the first time. To an external viewer, questions from the panel are often quite sharp. These guys did not get to where they are now without being able to ask the right questions or the questions most people don't think about. In my experiences, I have found the questions generally fall into two categories. One set is good hard questions about your ideas. These are the nicest sort of questions, the ones you know how to answer. Use them to continue to dig deeper into your ideas, always reinforcing its results and relevance. The second set are questions that are out of the blue. Most are totally irrelevant to your idea. For this type of questions, thank the panel member for their question, tell them it is irrelevant to this idea and explain WHY (really important!). Remember to reiterate why your ideas are relevant in your scope/niche. There is nothing wrong with telling them that their question is great, but inconsequential to the discussion. Now, there are also the questions that are relevant, but you've never thought about before! The big "OMG, why didn't I think of this?" ones. So far, I've gotten only one such question and I handled it by saying that we had considered that idea, and will expand on it as future work. Given the time and resource constraints, we thought it was more appropriate to focus our idea to the smaller scope. That, by no means, imply that our idea cannot be extended to your new perspective. Furthermore, we can also extend our ideas in other areas, such as blah blah blah... (prepared beforehand).
If there is one thing I took away from these experiences it is that there is no one else in the world who is more knowledgeable about your idea than you. These so-called panel experts might understand the field better, but when it comes down to the specific concentration you are addressing, treat them as eager students wanting to learn from you. If you can sense this from the panel, you are well on your way to success, since they are intrigued and easily sold onto your idea.
The last section is the council vote. Based on the discussions, you should have a pretty good idea of how many people you convinced. The rest is just formalities. It is cool to hear the 'yes' votes come in from around the table. Like the LOTR council meeting in Rivendell. Time to pump the fist. :)
Anyway, I kind of glossed over a lot of the details, but hopefully some of my experiences can be useful to others.
Last year's Chinese Lantern Festival at Ontario Place was spectacular. I could not stop recommending it to everyone. Some photos from last year are here.
This year, the crew from China was back again for the second Roger's Chinese Lantern Festival. The theme this year was the Qin dynasty and the 2008 Olympics.
I had really high expectations for this year's show. Took tochicam and tripod and headed down to Ontario Place. Thanks to the OCT, we got discounts to the festival.
The pictures speak for themselves, so I'll save the commentary for the end. Btw, these photos are DouDou's present! What a great uncle, eh? XD I'm still waiting... haha.
More photos can be found on flickr.
In truth, I was quite disappointed with this year's show. The scale seemed to be a lot smaller than last year's. The designs were not as sophisticated - i.e. last year's pottery dragon was truly amazing. Inevitably, people would compare with last year. Listening to other people's reactions, it was pretty much along the following lines... "Last year, the twelve zodiacs stood here and it was so much better." Also, the Qin dynasty stuff wasn't impressive at all.
I will admit, there were some lanterns that I particularly liked. The pandas, the silver dragon, the pandas again. But overall, something was lacking from the show. Still worth going if you missed the one last year.
One last thing. The stupid DVP northbound was closed tonight for maintenance. I've never driven on the city local arteries uptown before, so I decided to take the 427 up to 401. I had such a hard time finding the entrance to Gardiner westbound from Ontario Place. 427 was also a lot further west than I thought. I hate road closures.
As a change to our weekly regiment of cycling, AB and I decided to participate in the annual Terry Fox Run for Cancer Research this weekend. A brief recap for those who are not familiar with Terry Fox's tale:
Terry was only 18 years old when he was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma (bone cancer) and forced to have his right leg amputated 15 centimetres (six inches) above the knee in 1977.
While in hospital, Terry was so overcome by the suffering of other cancer patients, many of them young children, that he decided to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research.
He would call his journey the Marathon of Hope.
After 18 months and running over 5,000 kilometres (3,107 miles) to prepare, Terry started his run in St. John’s, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980 with little fanfare. Although it was difficult to garner attention in the beginning, enthusiasm soon grew, and the money collected along his route began to mount. He ran 42 kilometres (26 miles) a day through Canada's Atlantic provinces, Quebec and Ontario.
It was a journey that Canadians never forgot.
However, on September 1st, after 143 days and 5,373 kilometres (3,339 miles), Terry was forced to stop running outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario because cancer had appeared in his lungs. An entire nation was stunned and saddened. Terry passed away on June 28, 1981 at age 22.
(Terry Fox Foundation Website)
Millions around the world have continued the Marathon of Hope. The Terry Fox Run is now the world's largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research. People can elect to participate in a 5km (~ 3.1 miles) or 10km (~6.2 miles) run.
This is the forth or fifth time I have participated in the Terry Fox Run, though it would be my first time in 8 years. I remember last time I was able to jog for 5-6km, before I started walking. My goal this year would be to keep jogging for the entire run. Several people had asked how long it would take to run the entire 10km. Walking speed is like 3-4km/hr, so I guessed 1-1.5 hrs depending on the person.
Arrived at 8:30am for registration. They offered people bibs with "I am participating in the Terry Fox Run in honour of _____". Naturally, I attached one for D, which makes today's run even more special. The map of the run is here.
The horn blasted at around 9:15am and about 200-300 people took off. AB and I started off at the back of the pack and set a decent pace. We filtered through most of the people, till there were about 10 people left in front of us. As we passed the 1km mark, AB couldn't take it much more, and decided to walk. I continued on. After 2km, I saw that I was just over 11 minutes into the run. A quick mental calculation said that I had a chance to finish in less than an hour, if I could keep the pace up. This became my new goal.
From that point on, I settled into a nice pace behind this fellow jogger, Brad (I learned after the race). He was sweating profusely, but still manage to maintain a good speed. First water station at 2.5km marker. I just love grabbing water on the fly, dunking it down onto the dry throat. The next couple kilometers of the race were essentially just concentration and maintaining the pace. I was surprised that by the 5km mark, I was still feeling really awesome. A little tired but not too out of breath or sore. I passed the 5km within 26 minutes. The 1 hour goal is still achievable, though I knew that at 6km was a high incline grade and the last 2 km's were steady uphill climbs too.
As I got to the 6km hill, I had almost 30 minutes left for only 4 more kilometers! This was enough motivation for me to grind up that steep hill. I actually picked up speed on the uphill portion, though by the time I got up to the top, I was a bit out of breath. At 8km mark, I decided to make my move. I gathered some reserve energy and made a push to overtake Brad. For the rest of the race, he was biting my dust. At 9km, only 1 more kilometer to go and I had 14 minutes to finish!!! I started having some cramping in my right abdominal muscles. The last portion was essentially an uphill stretch and we were mixed in with everyone returning from the 5km run. Aside from having to dodge kids, dogs, baby carriages (I don't know why they don't move out of the way), this cramp was really taking its toil on me. The thought of walking this last stretch popped into my mind a few times, but I was so close to achieving my original goal and the fact that Brad was essentially right behind me, forced me to battle through the pain.
Ended up finishing the race in 52:43!! No one passed me today and I passed a few people, so I'm pretty sure I finished in top 10. Here is a breakdown of my run and the approximate timings:
1km - 5 minutes
2km - 11 minutes (+6 min)
3km - 16 minutes (+5 min)
4km - 21 minutes (+5 min)
5km - 26 minutes (+5 min)
6km - 31 minutes (+5 min)
7km - 36 minutes (+5 min)
8km - 41 minutes (+5 min)
9km - 46 minutes (+5 min)
10km - 52:43:51 minutes (+ 7 minutes)
52 minutes 43 seconds! This was definitely a personal best for me - totally beyond my expectations. I could not have given much more. Wow. My body was aching all over from the lactic acid buildup, but it totally paled in comparison with the immense feeling of self-fulfillment. Downed three bottles of water afterwards and met up with Brad. I thanked him for setting the pace for most of the race, and he, in turn, thanked me for keeping it up in the last 2km. He would have probably walked had I not overtaken him.
To break it down, 10 km in 52:43 is equivalent to an average speed of 11.37km/hr - 7.06mph - 3.16m/s - 10.36 ft/s! The world record for 10km is 27:02 (totally insane), so I was going just under twice as slow. I fear I set myself up for quite a challenge in next year's run, but I'm quite happy with the accomplishment. I think D would have been proud too. :)
P.S. The site raised over $20,000. If anyone want to donate some $, you can make an online donation at the Terry Fox Run web site.
Today was the start of the 2007-2008 badminton season. Went to the usual gym after work. It was nice to see all the familiar faces again - some of whom I have not seen in over 2 years (D&D duo). Some new faces as well! I was expecting the session to be packed today, but seems like half the people forgot about badminton today.
Played a couple mixed doubles matches. Everyone was kind of rusty. My service game was still on vacation. So were my drop and slice shots. Smashes were slowly coming back. The only thing I could rely on consistently were my clears. I was moving around the court fairly well and reaction timing was decent - managed to block most of the smashes and drives. Ended up finishing 1-2.
Near the end, AR challenged me to a singles match. I've played AR in numerous singles matches over the years, with him winning the majority of the games. However, during the tournament last year, when it really mattered, I managed to pull off the upset victory. AR has been trying to redeem himself every since.
Not being one who will back down from a challenge, I dutifully accepted. Game up to 15. I was totally in the zone for this match. I controlled most of the game with effective clears, forcing him to run side to side. When he was totally out of position, I'd send him a nice drop shot. Simple, efficient and effective. I just knew where the bird was going to be and was in perfect position to return most shots. In the end, I came up on top 15-3! UM!!!! AR mentioned that I didn't get rusty over the summer break. lol.
After badminton, there was light rain outside. Tochi Mobile needed to get some fuel. Went to the gas station, got out and started pumping. It was then that StormOfWrath, which had struck Grapes's pants earlier in the day, hit the gas station. Sheets of torrential downpour swept sideways. In 5 seconds, I was totally soaked! It felt like I was coming out of a shower! WTF. I never realized that it takes FOREVER to fill up a tank of gas! I had to brace myself behind Tochi Mobile the entire time.
I jumped into the car afterwards, soaking wet. For the first time in months, I turned on the HEAT, setting it to full-blast. At least I now know that my heating system still works! Decided not to risk driving on local streets, so took 407 ETR home. Tochi Mobile weathered the storm quite well and I was home 10 minutes later.
In other car related news, earlier this week I took Tochi Mobile for its routine oil change. The mechanic told me that both my right tires (front and rear) ate a nail. I had noticed my right tires seemed to be deflated a bit a few days ago. I had pumped them only a month ago. I didn't really think too much about it at the time, but I should have suspected better. They were apparently leaking very slowly. The shop charged me $20 per tire to fix. $3 for the gooey patch thing, $17 for labour. Super expensive, but at least I did not have to get new tires.
The following came up on my Google Reader feed today. "Photographing Fruit and Vegies - New Assignment". On first glance, I expected this to be a real Fruits and Veggies post. So I was a bit shocked to find that this was really an assignment from a photography blog that I subscribe to.
Anyway, we MUST go out and defend our honour! Veggies, get your cameras out and start snapping. Our Photoshop Hero, please get ready to fix up our photos. The alternative would be to submit the concert photos.
The submissions thread is here. The cauliflower and pomegranate ones are the best so far. We can do better.