Friday, January 13, 2006

madison: gazed and confused

I went to a mini-conference this morning. Of course, common advice about public speaking is to make eye contact with members of your audience. However, it's a little unsettling when a speaker hasn't made especial eye contact with you during a talk, but then suddenly looks directly at you and says, "Do they even make pornography with actors and actresses who are in their seventies and eighties?"

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That might throw someone off

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jeremy said...

RWS: While I'm not as SURE as you are, I would expect this to be the case as well, but I'm not exactly sure why I would be the one someone would look to for information about this.

Anonymous said...

I was sitting right in front of Jeremy when the speaker said this and I didn't get the impression at all that he was looking in our direction. I think Jeremy just *thought* he was being targeted. We need a whole other analysis as to why that may be the case.;-)

Anonymous said...

I agree with eszter, I was sitting to JF's left and asked myself (and him) exactly that!

Anonymous said...

This is a blog that allows fantasy (clue: false dates). Therefore, start fantasizing, readers. The 'speaker' is making eye contact with YOU.

Anonymous said...

For those of us in the room (most of us in the room) who were either oblivious or didn't notice eye-contact in any particular direction, Jeremy helpfully interrupted the speaker by loudly yelping, "What're you looking at ME for?!"

jeremy said...

The speaker was totally looking straight at me. Don't listen to whatever other alleged attendees say. It could be that he is one of those people whose eyes are actually fixed slightly above where he is really looking, meaning that he was really directing the query to the person in front of me, i.e., Eszter.