cyan_blue

brian1789 gave a talk on Mars drilling yesterday to a few hundred students at the SPE conference in San Antonio, and I wanted to share some pictures from his talk.

Here he is on the lecture hall floor, addressing the students from within their midst. This gave his lecture a more personal touch than if he'd simply spoken to them from up on stage.

Here he is later on at the exhibit hall, where he answered questions from groups of intrigued students for about 2 hours nonstop:

For fun, Jay entered the hall in a spacesuit and helmet, which the crowd loved. Here he is getting assistance in removing the helmet from one of the groups of students up near the stage.

Lots and lots of people were taking his picture as he began his talk...

I like his use of animated hand gestures :-)

Surrounded by throngs of students...

Students weren't the only ones interested in his work... a lot of oil company execs wanted to know more about his automated drill, too!

These students were all shy about approaching him to ask a question, and were hanging back around the periphery. I told them that he loves to talk to people, and encouraged them to go on up :-)

More interested conference-goers...

Kneeling down to answer this one kid's question:

Deftly handling a question from a man who was slightly challenging...

Yet more throngs of students...

Here he is with Victoria, who arranged his talk (and our accomodations, which were lovely - we had a 15th story balcony view overlooking the Riverwalk).