Talks IV: Summer Course in UK
When I landed in Bristol, I told the officer at the airport I was there for a week-long summer course. It was Thursday already when I got there, rainy and chilly, not much of a summer, so he stared at me strangely.
Raphael, Ashley and Andreas organized a terrific summer school at Bristol (with Eyal K, Seffi N and others, I would have learned a lot if I had been there the whole week).
I gave 4 lectures. I know from my past at U. Warwick that the students in UK are sharp and very well trained and when pushed by directly asking a question, they have thoughtful answers. So, I made the first lecture essentially interactive, getting them to play roles, first as a search engine user (so they think about their interaction with the ads: how you scan them, what kind of ads you click, what URLs turn you off, etc), then as an advertiser running an ad campaign (large or small advertiser, do you care for making a sale, what keywords would you choose, when do you face a budget problem, etc). I thought the discussion went well and the students more or less isolated the major issues I would have summarized in a slide, but the process was more fun. The remaining lectures were mostly theorems and explanations, and some proofs.
From the few minutes I listened in on Seffi, he is a very clear lecturer and it was just a treat. My lectures never get to that state of clarity. So, I am going to have to produce the slides and put them on the web. This also means, I hope the video camera I saw throughout my lecture was a prop and no tapes will emerge. :)
Raphael, Ashley and Andreas organized a terrific summer school at Bristol (with Eyal K, Seffi N and others, I would have learned a lot if I had been there the whole week).
I gave 4 lectures. I know from my past at U. Warwick that the students in UK are sharp and very well trained and when pushed by directly asking a question, they have thoughtful answers. So, I made the first lecture essentially interactive, getting them to play roles, first as a search engine user (so they think about their interaction with the ads: how you scan them, what kind of ads you click, what URLs turn you off, etc), then as an advertiser running an ad campaign (large or small advertiser, do you care for making a sale, what keywords would you choose, when do you face a budget problem, etc). I thought the discussion went well and the students more or less isolated the major issues I would have summarized in a slide, but the process was more fun. The remaining lectures were mostly theorems and explanations, and some proofs.
From the few minutes I listened in on Seffi, he is a very clear lecturer and it was just a treat. My lectures never get to that state of clarity. So, I am going to have to produce the slides and put them on the web. This also means, I hope the video camera I saw throughout my lecture was a prop and no tapes will emerge. :)
posted by metoo at 5:39 AM
3 Comments:
Your blog posts are crisp, entertaining and informative, and your style of writing is impeccable. It takes 30 mins - 1 hr for you to write a blog post and it takes just 30s - 1 min for me to read it, but at the end of those 30s, there is a smile on my face :-) Much thanks!
Did you know that you appear on YouTube ad video about working at Google New York? The link is below:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxQ3LiEKqtY
It's at 1:46 min.
Dear Anom: Your comments made my day, I am smiling, thank you!
Hi Edward: I saw that fleeting moment in the YouTube video, and just as in that video, the other things at Google NY will fill ones' attention much more than my moment. :) Thanks for the pointer.
-- metoo.
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