MY BIG DAY IN THE UNITED STATES
One day in the mid year 2001, my Professor or Sensei in Japanese handed me the brochure of an ASAE annual international conference in the United States, which scheduled from July 28 to July 31, 2002 at Chicago, Illinois. To ones who are not familiar with an agricultural engineering field, ASAE stands for American Society of Agricultural Engineers which is a professional and technical organization dedicated to the advancement of engineering applicable to agricultural, food, and biological systems. It is well-known by all agricultural engineers around the world. To present the work in this conference, you need to submit a presentation proposal to the session organizer for qualifying. I got the notification of acceptance a bit late than it was noticed in the brochure. Anyway, I was listed as the contact for the presentation listed in the lecture presentation. The meeting kept me busy from since; so many things had to be done, e.g., applying the visa to enter to the United States, preregister for the meeting in order to receive the highly discounted registration fee, make a room reservation, find out the flight and air line, write the presentation paper for distribution at the meeting, and prepare the PowerPoint presentation.
My presentation was on the 31st July 2002, I decided to leave Japan for Chicago on the 29th July by Northwest Airlines passed through Detroit Metropolitan Airport. I started to attend the conference from the 30th July. Lecture presentations in this meeting were the traditional, time-tested method of sharing information. The lecture presentation room was customarily in an auditorium configuration with the speaker in the front of the room. Available in each lecture room were; screen, microphone, pointer, lectern, and power point projector, no other equipment was available. The laptops needed to be supplied by individual speakers. Presentations were limited to 15 minutes and allowed for minimal interaction with the audiences. Before each speaker started to present the work, the moderators gave a brief biography of the upcoming speaker in their introduction. In each technical session, the audiences were 30 to 200 persons. Most speakers did not read or memorize the presentation unlike the conferences hold in Japan. Reading, in my opinion, reduces eye contact, and memorization make the talk appears canned; not natural. All questions and comments were too harsh, frank, and too much critique. However, those actions were ‘fair and reasonable”. Part of being “fair and reasonable” means that it is helpful for further improvement.
The night before my presentation, I could not sleep getting too much worried as I am non-native English speaker. The atmosphere observed beforehand could not help much, in stead making me more fear and panic. The big time of mine was exactly come at 10.30 a.m. on the 31st December and I thought I did a good job. After my talk finished, I realized that the three most important ingredients for the presentation are preparation, preparation, and preparation, especially if you are non-native English speaker. The audience judges the individual speaker by how well you condense a year’s work into a 15-minute talk. If you are prepared, your attitude improved, and your confidence grows. Moreover, preparation can compensate for lack of talent. In addition, I must suggest that for any presentation it is a good idea to use the presentation software that is standard, preferably MS PowerPoint. Use of common font, e.g., Times, Arial, could help avoid font compatibility problems.
Finally, it is not easy for students to participate in the international conference with a 50,000 Yen allowance subsidizes by the university. The expenses, e.g., the registration fee, the hotel charge, the air ticker, the meal charge, the local transportation, are costly and expensive. However, the advantages received as you had a chance to open to the world wide, to involve in the society, to see how professional speakers acted, to be part of this big event, are even more important and worthy to pay for. You also may be in touch for further research or any other reasons with those people you met during the meeting. To me, I met many agricultural engineers, many managers or the board of directors, and many famous professors that I have been using their textbooks for my whole life study and work. I just cannot express how I am very glad to meet with those people. It is worth to waste my time and money coming to this meeting. The bottom line is that you must always have faith in yourself; hey! I did it.
