Yesterday I was invited to give lecture by Rotary club Hiriyur to give lecture on Chandrayaan-1 ,ISRO'S first moon mission.I prepared a detailed power point presentation on moon mission which included a audio visual presentation also.
After reaching Hiriyur ,and then going through their programme ,I could see my presentation was scheduled as the last presentation before lunch.I new that all the people will be exhausted by that time and there will be hardly any interest to hear my lecture at 1:15 pm that too before a delicious lunch.I thought it is futile to make power point presentation for 30 minutes.Besides there was no projector or screen available at the venue.Then I decided to make a oral presentation to an audience basically from local business and other professionals community.I new the challenge before me to talk to an audience which was very hungry by that time,not necessarily hungry about science and technology.
I spoke about half an hour,that was allotted time to me,then about to end my lecture by thanking the organisers .To my surprise,I received a chit from the organisers to speak in Kannada for about another 15 minutes.
At the end of the talk there was interactive session and several questions were asked me .I was amazed by the interest of the non scientific community to know about science.For once I was proved wrong.
There was so much interest in ISRO'S activity that made me to realise the need to take science to the common man.Science is not dead in this country ,there is need to popularise it.ISRO is better equipped to do this.
The need to take especially space technology to common man is very important!! Common people do not understand from where they get the weather data, communication, GPS or for that fact even day to day tools like google map/earth!!! For most of them it seems like an costly adventure of sorts where ultimately a costly vehicle is thrown into the sea.
ReplyDeleteI am really happy you are enjoying these lecture sessions!! way to go!!
--Dhiraj Hathwar