I am all in favor of increasing scientific communication, both within the field and to the general public. So, let me first go on record as saying I think it's a great thing that the American Astronomical Society decided to podcast some of the large plenary talks from their latest meeting in Seattle. Podcasting is a terrific way of giving more people access to something that you'd have to be priviliged with time, money, and credentials to attend. Apple had a big presence in the plenary sessions, and have even loaded the talks into iTunes! (Search on "AAS/AAPT"). A big "huzzah!" to all involved. However. For scientific talks, the visuals are key. Plots, diagrams, equations -- key content is lost when all you have is sound. If you listen to any of the talks, you'll hear people saying "If you look here...", "As you see...", etc. Now, if you already have a good sense of what the speaker is talking about, it may be fine to just have the words, but I'm very curious what it's like to listen to these without the images that go along with them. Hopefully next time they'll at least have a link to the PDF of the slides. Now the kicker is that the website did indeed include some visuals, and man did they go out of their way to make them weird. They video-taped all the speakers, and painstakingly combed through every millisecond of footage to pick the oddest damn still-frames they could find. For example, nothing captures the excitement of the press conference on "NEWS FLASH FROM THE GALACTIC CENTER!!!" like the following:
Nor, could they have identified more amusingly unflattering moments in 50 minutes of video than the still frames they chose for me and my collaborator Rachel Somerville, who gave back-to-back talks. Update: Removed on the count of insensitivity on my part. Sincere apologies to all. None of the other speakers fared much better. On the whole, however, I think this is terrific progress. Next time they may even spell my name right.
