Thursday, April 18, 2013

I talked about that last time

I find it mildly irritating when speakers at conferences or seminar series say something like, "I am not going to explain all this background material or my earlier results because last year I talked about that."

There are several reasons I don't like this.
1. It assumes that everyone present was there last time.
2. It assumes that those present on the last occasion understood and remember the relevant material! [To me that is fantasy.]
3. It seems to be shutting off certain topics for questions and discussion.

Obviously, one can't cover everything and must leave out material. Everyone knows and accepts that. But, I think it is better not to deal with the problem in this way.


  1. It's a tough problem. For the people up to date in that subfield, it can also be annoying to hear talks for years that rehash the same points over and over again without addressing the cutting edge research or interesting subtleties. If 30 minutes of a 45 minute talk are needed to explain the background, there's not much time to disseminate new perspectives.

    I think conversations are sometimes better than conferences in this regard, because the speaker can calibrate the delivery given the listener's background. Unfortunately, the 1-to-1 conversations are not very efficient compared to the 1-to-50 talks, and also often uninteresting for the expert.

    Perhaps the moral is that every medium, every style, every communication strategy has a disadvantage.

  2. I agree Ross. A better way is to give a reference so that at least people who are genuinely interested can find it later. If it is important and you have talked about it before but haven't published it, why not?