Best of luck with the presentation, Cosmic. And you're certainly welcome to use any of my videos. You could have them constantly playing on a small TV in the corner or something. All the videos I have must add up to at least 20 minutes.

Cheers,
Aldo.

Have you considered prepping a map showing the traverse routes of spirit and oppy over earth bound maps. Having them either starting or finishing at the talk venue would be a neat way to emphasise the roving capabilities.

Example from Doug below

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...pe=post&id=3634

Oh, yeah. With the help of everyone here I have thought of many amazing perspectives to use in this presentation. The thing that sucks is that the meatheads are telling me I have only 10 minutes! How the hell can somone present the MER mission results in 10 freakin' minutes? I won't complain about the fact that they only gave me 1.5 weeks to put the whole thing together.

I hope I have a handle on it, but the "stuff" is about to hit the fan.

Heh! Oh boy,... been there, done that. Welcome to the scientific side-show circuit, Tom. I could tell you a story about giving a "lecture" in a fairground throughfare, as the public drifted through - balloons and cotton candy in hand!
Never mind. Your conscience is clear. Forget a story line. Just sock 'em with your best drop-dead AV's and soundbites, and write it off as a 'learning experience'.
The gods test those whom they love.

CR,

in that case

show the Maas video and narrate it

everyone loves it, it explains the mission perfectly and its about 9 action packed minutes. Start at the point of "7 months later" then plan for maybe 5 -6 images at most. do the 3D some other time.

as Shaka says, its a learning experience.

so do the best you can to make those 10 minutes the most unforgettable for the kids !!!

ken

PS: give them a full page handout of the labeled Mars rover diagram, available in the press kit if can can get the place to make xerox copies

Thanks again, both of you. I had already decided on a hybrid of those ideas. I'm using that "after seven months" segment of the Maas animation (hopefully with some good speakers including a subwoofer, cranked up), and a collection of some of the best anaglyphs from the missions. I've got 3500 pairs of glasses and dammit, I'm going to give them to the kids and show them Mars in 3D. I have also printed some large 360 panoramas in near real color (approximately 18 inches tall by 9 feet wide), and 3 by 3 foot prints of a rover in color, a rover anaglyph, and the Sunset FX pic with Spirit.

I think I'm going to have a lot of fun doing this. Right now, I am trying to see if I can possibly squeeze in a quick overflight of Mars using the nice Geofusion Mars Demo. http://www.geofusion.com/MarsDemo/

ATTA, PEPPER! You got the mojo.
Just to round out my 'horror story', I felt lots better afterward. I managed to suck in a growing cadre of seriously interested persons who left the passing stream and gathered within touching distance. Their flurry of earnest questions afterward showed they heard every word. good stuff.

I can just picture picture that "scientific side-show circuit" venue, Shaka. Apparently you managed to rise to the occasion. I'm just hoping they don't stream through mine with "balloons and cotton candy in hand."

I've been reminded that I owe you fine people an update now that the show is on the road, and after so many of you have offered many excellent suggestions. The short story is that it has gone wonderfully. Hearing the oohs and aahhs from the kids and their teachers has been a real treat. How could I fail with such amazing stuff.

I came prepared with enough information to talk all day if necessary, but the schedule was very tight, and I usually didn't finish all that I had planned for the 10 minutes I was supposed to have. Questions from the kids sometimes slowed me down, but it was worth responding to those. There were overly zealous teachers wasting time trying to keep some of the kids quiet, and understandably zealous kids looking all over the room with their new red/cyan glasses, trying to see in 3d! It was a sight to behold. I worked out a routine though that seemed to hold most everyone's attention. I wasn't able to use all of the imagery, movies, etc, that were suggested, but I now have all of that available should I get opportunities to do longer presentations.

I had some of Nico's panoramas, and other images on the walls, adding to the ambience. I was almost always forced to only show a piece of the Maas animation (but I did manage to hook up a decent set of speakers with a subwoofer for that) and then as many anaglyphs as I could. A couple of times I had enough time to show dust devil animations and some eclipse movies.

The bottom line is that this presentation was identified as one of the best to see in the whole program, and for that I am quite pleased. The children and the adults really did seem to enjoy it. I have 3 or 4 more days remaining, but I am hoping to train some others to do it tomorrow, so I can catch up on my backlog at work. People are already approaching me to talk about other venues. Maybe I'll get to do it properly one day.

I reckon! sssplick! ...I just popped a tinnie to toast your success .
Spread the gospel, Tom! Every talk counts.

Congratulations on your success! - It's great that you "spread the gospel".

Were you using an LCD Projector thingie? Did the Anaglyphs look OK - or did they look like the left eye was really dark? I have a major problem with that at the moment, it's really annoying.

Kudos on getting some kids excited about all this - they deserve to know what's going on!

Doug

Sounds like you made great use of your limited time. I was reminded of the occasions when our club did astronomy nights at elementary schools and got clouded out (which is often in Michigan). We would still set up our scopes in the gym, hang posters of the moon, planets, Orion Nebula and Pleiades on the opposite wall, and "observe" them. Even though it wasn't what we really wanted to show, the kids still got excited about telescopes and went away with some new knowledge. It was better than just canceling the event. Any time you can do anything that sparks interest, it's a good thing.

Great job!

Doug: I've had that left eye dark problem too, but you can often adjust the color balance on the LCD projector to correct that and display the anaglyphs properly. Otherwise its impossible to show them.

CR: sounds like you had a typically great show. your comments are similar to my experiences also. There is always more to show, so try to focus on the best and adjust based on crowd reaction and new stuff.

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words and support. I can't tell you how much fun this has been, and I look forward to doing more some day.

Doug: Apparently it was not an LCD projector. It was the DLP type. I didn't notice any darkness problems whatsoever. The brand I had was InFocus model X1, and the anaglyphs looked great.