Introduction
I wasn’t entirely certain based on last year’s experience (it was my first time, and I was pretty overwhelmed, but one’s first time is always kinda special in its own way). To repeat the relevant parts from my post summarizing my TAM experience last year:
I guess the bottom-line question at this point is, based on all the above, was TAM worth the time and the expense? … It’s honestly hard for me to give a giant, resounding, unconditional “yes” that I’ll spend at least $1100 next year to come to TAM. …
With all that said (written), will I go next year? As the Magic 8 Ball would say, “All signs point to ‘Yes.’”
Presenting!
I can’t honestly say that there aren’t some extenuating or special circumstances towards me going this year that a lot of people have helped make happen. Well, one, really … I’m presenting! I’ll be doing a workshop that has, as of this writing, been scheduled for first thing on Thursday morning, Workshop 1A, 8:00A.M. sharp. Someone needs to make sure I’m awake, please. Appropriately, I’m in the “Skeptical Education” track as opposed to the “Skeptical Activism” track.
The workshop title is: “How Your Camera Lies to You: From UFOs to Ghosts, a Skeptics’ Guide to Photography.” I’ll be co-leading it with a veteran presenter, Bryan Bonner of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Society. Bryan was a professional photographer for many, many years (maybe still is? I’m actually not entirely sure what his day job is).
I already have a fairly fleshed out outline for the workshop, and I will be giving at least one short version of it at the Denver Skepticamp in April. But, there’s always room at this point for changes, additions, and deletions.
Rough Outline
To give you an idea at this point …
First third is going to be more of a (I hate to use the word, but …) lecture-style where Bryan and I are going to talk about how cameras and various forms of detectors (film, tape, CCD) work with an emphasis on – especially these days – how cameras cheat and lie about what they really imaged in order to be faster and cheaper that, in most cases, don’t matter, but can result in anomalies that someone will point to and say is Nibiru coming to get us.
The second third is going to be more interactive and focus on purposeful human manipulation. Bryan will talk about old darkroom tricks while I’ll focus more on the basics of image processing in a digital age. We’ll bring in examples of some of the more famous anomalies in images, such as some famous ghost images, UFO photos, and the Face on Mars.
The next third is going to be an in-depth image analysis that will be very interactive. The idea is that we’ll present some images and have you try to figure out what’s going on and how to tell if it’s been manipulated and, if so, how that may have happened … or at least how you can tell if it’s been manipulated. Cue the lunar ziggurat or Hoagland’s pink energy beam.
The fourth third is to leave a block of time at the end for any questions.
Interactivity
Something D.J. (JREF president) emphasized to me is that interactivity should be a major part of workshops at TAM. That’s the point of a “workshop” versus a talk or panel. And I honestly was disappointed last year that many of the workshops were NOT interactive and yet they were two hours long.
This year, we have 90 minutes as opposed to 120. But, I would like to know what you folks think would be good ways for us workshop presenters (myself and Bryan) to better make this interactive. Ideas at the moment are:
- Obviously questions can be asked.
- The audience trying to figure out what’s going on in the images.
- Soliciting people who are going to the workshop to send in photos that we could choose from to analyze during the workshop.
- iPod/Pad/Phone and/or Android “app” that covers the basics we’ll talk about, and/or a handout.
For that last bullet point, if anyone thinks this is a good idea, please also suggest a programmer who’d be interested in working on this for free. Yes, I’m a part-time freelancer/contractor, and I read the “Clients from Hell” blog, so don’t lecture me about expecting stuff for free being foolish. Ideally the person is already into science/skepticism/education/etc. and so understands that there is no budget for this and it’s community outreach.
Final Thoughts
All that said, I’m looking forward to this but I’m also pretty nervous. This is a big step up from doing a blog, or a podcast, or an interview, or a local talk. After this, I’ll be able to say I did a show in Vegas!
We’ll see what happens. And, over the next few months as TAM gets closer, I’ll be planning this out more and post more details.
So, if you’re planning on going to TAM, and you can manage to be awake at 8AM, please consider coming to Workshop 1A!
Exposing PseudoAstronomy 