Presenting with SOS
Depending on your audience, you will want to adjust the technical level of your presentation as well as the amount of information given. This section includes some ideas for keeping your presentation fresh and relevant while engaging your audience.
Is it Fun to Listen to You?
Permalink to Is it Fun to Listen to You?Here are a few general presentation techniques to keep in mind during a SOS presentation:
- Speak slowly and clearly
- Alternate your pitch
- Speak with enthusiasm and interest
- Keep the language basic — avoid technical terms
- Do not overload the audience with information
- Use inquiry methods to encourage individual participation (more on this in Educating with SOS)
- Explain any acronym used or don’t use any
Begin With the Nuts and Bolts
Permalink to Begin With the Nuts and BoltsAs a docent, you want to remove as many distractions as possible. Because Science On a Sphere® is such a unique visualization display, many in the audience will be distracted by trying to figure out how it works. At the beginning of your presentation, take a moment to briefly describe how SOS works and point out the projector locations. Once people understand how it works, they can focus their attention on the visualizations rather than the technology used to display the visualizations. Here are a few key points to make about the technology behind SOS:
- Invented by Dr. Alexander MacDonald, director of the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory in the late 1990s
- In the early 2000s SOS started to really take form and the first public installation was in 2004
- The sphere has a 68 inch diameter, weighs 55 pounds, and is made of carbon fiber
- The sphere is hanging from three thin cables from the ceiling and does not move
- There are four projectors positioned in a square around the sphere
- All of the software for warping, projecting and blending the images was written by NOAA
- The whole system runs on one computer running Ubuntu Linux
- There are three graphics cards in the computer: one for the monitor and two dual output cards to support the four projectors
- NOAA was awarded a patent for Science On a Sphere® in 2005
- NOAA uses SOS as an educational tool and it is currently installed in many sites around the world