The SIGGRAPH conference kicked off today with the traditional “Fast Forward”. This is the event in which all of the technical papers — and this year there will be something like 173 such papers — are previewed by their authors, who get 30 seconds each to convey the gestalt of their work.
I was one of those authors this year, and it’s always fun to get up in front of this community at the kickoff of such a great conference.
In fact, I have an unusual place in the history of the SIGGRAPH Fast Forward. The first year it was held — in 2002 in San Antonio — I had a paper at the conference. When I was told about this radical new idea, that we would each give an incredibly brief preview of our papers, I thought that was completely ridiculous.
“How can you summarize a paper in such a short amount of time?” I thought to myself. So as a kind of punk response, I wrote and then performed a gangsta rap version of my paper.
Well, dear reader, my little rebellion ended up being embraced by the community. The following year there were a number of similarly edgy takes on the Fast Forward presentation. In the intervening years, the punked-out Fast Forward presentation has evolved into a proud transition.
This year for example, one young scientist performed a truly excellent gangsta rap version of his paper. I wonder if he has any idea that I am his original mack daddy.
Now /that/ is something I’ll be looking up online. Though, happening in 2002, the chances are pretty slim I’ll find it.. 🙁
Yeah and all, but hey, Mack Daddy, where can we find online the video and lyrics of your 2002 noisy rap ? ( The young generation has to be taught :-p )