Before the Dawn of IP Telephony - Part 8
Successful presentation (September 1997)
These contents translated a serialization article carried by ITPro IP telephony ONLINE published by Nikkei Business Publications, Inc. Jump to the original (Japanese).
Shinji Usuba
General Manager
eSound Venture Unit
Business Incubation Division
Systems Network Group
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd
The research paper on VOICEHUB was selected by an international academic conference called ISS for a presentation in Toronto, Canada. Although we were relaxed at first, we felt the tension build gradually as the day of the presentation came upon us.
On September 25th, the day of our presentation had finally come. Manager Mr.Konishi and I had barely slept the night before. At 5am, we left the hotel to the symposium. The convention center where the symposium was to be held was 15 minutes from the hotel on foot. We walked in silence for the entire time. Like the title, the road had the dimness of "before dawn."
Will we be able to make our statements clearly? Will people even listen? Such worries and mixed feelings occupied our minds. I had a glimpse of the faces of the people related to the project in my mind: Department Manager Mr. Sekine who was the first person to speak of the planning of VOICEHUB in August 1995, Manager Mr. Chimura. Assistant Manager Mr. Izumi the coauthor of the academic paper that became the base of this presentation. All these faces flashed before my eyes. I'll just do the best I can. I decided to go forward with the presentation without worrying about the outcome.
The atmosphere during the presentation
Photo 1 The cover of our presentation
The session we presented was an interactive session, and a 45-minute presentation was repeated four times (photo 1). Mr. Konishi was in charge of the first and third presentations, and I was in charge of the second and forth. The hall had an audience capacity of less than 100. Some of the popular sessions had standing audiences. On the other hand, empty seats were noticeable during our presentation. Fortunately, the front rows were filled during the last session with very little empty seats visible from where I was standing while making the presentation.
It was far from a huge success. During the first and third presentations made by Mr. Konishi, I was able to observe the crowd while switching slides. Some stared in mid-air frowning, some nodded. Overall, the reaction was quiet. Questions were sparse and never reached anything worth debating. Perhaps it was our level of English.
Continued to next page: That was nice presentation...
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