The First Seminar

I've never been the hugest fan of speeches for the same reason I didn't want to go to a school with huge lecture halls. In a university with a lecture hall, the teacher basically talks at you rather than recognizes and addressing you on a first name basis (which is probably why I like the classes at Champlain so much, because they don't do that). It's hard for the speaker to get in touch with you on a personal level.

I didn't think that the emergent speech was bad at all because it avoided those usual pitfalls by allowing people in the audience to actually ask questions in the middle of it that related to their own interests. That said, we were also forced to answer several questions related to the presentation. To make things difficult, I will do them in no particular order.

1.) When I hear about AAA companies in the industry, I think these big corporations without any real soul or creative idea in their system. It was refreshing to hear that according to the top employees, they were given relatively loose freedom over the project, especially considering how much of a hard core fan base Deus Ex has.

2.) I suppose if there was anything I was paying really close attention to during the presentation it was the way the speakers presented. We were challenging the next day, so it was interesting to see how both Mary and JF handled their powerpoint, giving themselves their own personalities and paying off on each other's flaws. It's something to consider for our final presentation in November.

3.) Besides the unique spin on how much creative freedom the two had in the Deus Ex project, my expectations for the people working under them were largely the same. These seemed like the head project manager and the people who would give the orders as opposed to someone like me who would probably work for them and carry out their requests with no real say in the matter, despite what they might have told the audience otherwise. It's impossible on a team so large to please every single person, as they said.

A large team