Just imagine: Say somebody you work with submits an abstract and gets invited to present a talk at a conference. Then a couple months later, say that person decides to leave your workplace to “spend more time with her kids”. Then, say, for some bizarre reason your boss gets a bee in his bonnet and tells you “This will be such a wonderful opportunity; why don’t you give the talk in her place!?!” And let’s just say that wasn’t really a request. And then say that quasi-request happened a little over a week before you’re supposed to fly out. And let’s just say you’re flying out tomorrow. And let’s just say your ear is about to fall off because you’ve spent the last few days in near-constant phone contact with the person who was supposed to give the damn talk, the subject of which you don’t really know nearly as much about. And you’ve got to know what she knows to avoid looking like an idiot. In a week. And let’s just say your bags aren’t packed yet, and you’re still working on the last couple slides, and you won’t get to rehearse the talk with anyone even once tonight because they’ve all got “plans”. And say your wife’s birthday is this coming Wednesday, you get back Monday, and you’ve got to plan her party over Tuesday. But you can’t take the day off because you’ve got to brief people back home about the meeting after you return.
Any leverage wiggle-room? “Hey boss, I’ll do this, but I better get Carte Blanche on company plastic, with car service both ways, on Wednesday when I get back.”
Google ‘Rescue Me: American Express comercial’ and live the American Dream.
Since you’re giving it for someone else, no one will expect you to know the subject as well as the author. So just learn up the obvious stuff, and if you get a question that you can’t answer, say you can’t answer it and that you’ll have to get back to them.
I wish I could discuss it with you. Maybe you’ll know how to answer a particular question about this particular receptor tyrosine kinase and every serine/threonine kinase and every substrate downstream of it and all the bloody second messengers you’ve ever heard of that I’m bound to get asked about.
And yes I know RTKs don’t use second messengers, GPCRs do, but hey, since this receptor shares downstream targets with about a hundred things just imagine the crosstalk between this and that protein kinase C isoform and what if it were involved with PI3 kinase or can this bind diacylglycerol and who knows how important p38 MAP kinase is to this, because, you know, it’s involved with nearlly all processes of mamallian life and you’re expected to know all about it just like the guys and gals who just got out of grad school…
Right – so if everyone knows about it, why are you delivering a paper? Wouldn’t iut be in all the textbooks?
But, of course, not everyone knows about it, and more than half of the people hearing the paper will know less than half of what you know. And the ones asking the really difficult questions won’t be doing it to get an answer, but to score brownie points for being smarter than anyone else. So say, either “I’m sure the answer to that is in one of the appendixes, or one of the articles cited” (if you think it might be), or “Hmm. That’s very interesting. I’ll have to think about that and get backj to you on that.”
Well, there you go buddy, whenever anyone asks a question say, “well, that’s an excellent question,” and then rapidly mix up the phrases, “p13, p38, mitogen activated protein kinase kinase kinasekinasekinasekinase,” faster than they can sort out the number of times you just blurted out, “kinase,” have your hands and shout, “next question?”
Oh, or alternately, use my third favorite molecular-biology presentation technique of all time: steal one of those protein interactome maps and put it into a Powerpoint slide so that it’s so fucking tiny that no one in the room can even begin to make it out, use a laser pointer to motion to half of the diagram in rapid, sweeping circles, and then say, “next question?”
Yes, I do love the jackasses that do that.
Alternatively, I see a Google ad for, “Activate your Brain and IQ: Lab proven to amplify IQ, brain functions, and intelligence!” Pop a few of those, read up, and then you’ll do just fine.
I’ve done this - though with a bit of preparation I learned enough about the subject to find a bug in the talk. I’ve also seen people give talks for people not in their university or anything.
You can only win. Be up front about it being someone else’s work, and if you get questions you can’t answer, tell them to see you after the session, get their card, and the question, and tell them you’ll forward it to the real author and get back to them.
The audience will think you are brave and brilliant for being willing to do this at all, and will be thinking they’re glad its not them.
The conference I’m involved with has a rule that session chairs should cut off nasty questions to grad students, but nasty questions to professors is fine. Make sure your session chair will intervene if someone gets aggressive - but I doubt that will happen.
I’ve got another suggestion - pretend you don’t speak the language very well. We often have speakers who have memorized their talks in English, and do a pretty good job presenting them - no animation, but they’re understandable. But for questions, no hope. No matter how well the session chair rephrases it, they don’t understand.
I’m not criticizing them a bit - they do a better job than I ever could. But it does get them out of question time.
You can also try to extend the talk to the last possible minute, studiously ignoring the frantic efforts of the chair to get you to stop, so that there will be no time for questions.
Ah yes, just the thing…“That’s a very interesting question, something we’ve been thinking seriously about…But it’s complicated because when the protein is fuckoffsylated and translocated to the plasma membrane, gonadal orificular FRAK kinase kinase kinase (GOFRAKKKK) inserts inself into the CREB regenerating arsenine channel kinase (CRACK) pore, and, quite obviously, severe epididimal necrosis soon follows.”
That’s it: I’m giving the talk in fucking Ubbi Dubbi. Look for me somewhere in a police blotter soon after the weekend, something about “drunk, naked geek seen streaking through halls of institute screaming ‘Ubi dubon’t fubucking knubow!’”
This always works for me: “I really want this to be more of a discussion than a presentation. Why don’t you start by telling me some of your experiences with __________.”
I had very similar angst before attending a workshop recently. And indeed, I gave a presentation that outright sucked. No-one cared. It wasn’t even in the worst 50% of the presentations, despite being the worst presentation I’ve ever given. No-one pays attention to the presentations.
Then I went out and got ratted three nights in a row with a bunch of people who were unusually interesting for a conference on control theory. I met an Israeli, a South African, a Romanian and a Lebanese guy, and we all got on famously, aided considerably by large quantities of local Port. And to think; the night before leaving I was seriously considering what items I could stow in my luggage that would prevent me from flying without getting me arrested.
You’ll be fine. Just bring some Port if you’re not heading to Portugal.
