I’ve given a lot of presentations. I like giving them, researching, preparing slides, talking, answering questions. In the past few years, I’ve made an effort to improve my skills. I’ve reduced the amount of text on my slides, I face the audience, I speak slower—and I try to learn from my mistakes.
The Megahunks & Superbabes fiasco
About a year ago, I prepared a talk on the use of analogies to understand complex systems to give as a part of the Un-Distinguished Lecture Series (better known as UDLS). It’s a topic I find interesting, but I worried that it would be boring to a bunch of grad students dropping in on Friday before going out to drink.
In order to spice it up a bit and, yes, try to secure a larger audience, I announced a talk on a different topic: sexy men and women. Before giving the presentation on analogies and complexity, I would give a joke presentation full of garish slides, inane talk, and unfortunate typos. It would lighten the mood, I thought. The audience and I would laugh at the amateur quality and vapidity of it all. I put together a few slides, and mailed out the following abstract:
there are lots of people that are super hot for men and for women but do we know which is hotter the man or the woman? im going to show a lot of pictures of sexy people and we can decide which are the most sexy or the two. SAFE FOR KIDS!!! (your sick for thinking i’d make a pornshow) ;P c u there
Lucas really digs human–computer interaction, video games, and writing. He has a master's degree in computer science from UBC and a bachelor's in cognitive science from Queen's. 
