In my first semester at Mississippi St., I took Public Speaking. It was 101 like course that all freshmen had to take. We were all scattered across about 30 different classes so you had to get some grad students to teach it. My teacher was a first year grad student. Let's just say I knew I was in trouble the first day when she commented that Martin Luther King, Jr. "I Have A Dream" speech was "a pretty good speech". Right, the defining moment of the civil rights movement, in front of the Lincoln Memorial and millions of people was just pretty good. How could my best even be acceptable.
 Well, it was...barely. The big problem was that the Communications School had a common grading system for speeches on a 1-8 scale. Why they use 1-8 is why Communications degrees are a joke. However, most of the teachers would give half points so you could get a 7.5 in delivery or 6.5 in content. But my teacher decided to stick with even numbers. So if you were less than perfect, like Rev. King was, you got a 7. That 7 out of 8 is 87.5% which means the best you could really get was a B. More likely, you were a 6/8 or even 5/8 which put you in the C or D range. I believe my final average for the semester was a 72 which barely got me to a C. I only made one other C in college. It was in a summer class of Electromagnetics II taught by Dr. Donohoe, a very tough but fair teacher, and that was high C. Yep, my 2 toughest classes as an Electrical Engineer was an abbreviated Electromagnetics II course and a 101 public speaking class.
I wonder how my crazy teacher would have graded me this week. I spoke at a Hardlines Technology Forum conference. HTF is the standards body for the Hardlines vertical. In English, they represent the Home Depots, Black and Decker and other building related companies on the world in helping them use technical standards and software to communicate electronically, like sending a purchase order electronically and what software they need to interpret it. And that is related to what I do with the testing of this software.
Here is the Powerpoint of my HTF Presentation. It is about undestanding AS2 and how it compares to other B2B transports. Again in English translation, it is the most popular way to send electronic messages between your business partners and here is how it compares to other ways of communicating with your partners. The end user customer is oblivious to it, but Lowes and most of these Hardline companies use AS2 in their business interactions.
About 25 people showed up, and I feel I did a good job. I read the evaluation forms that were turned in by the session participants, and most indicated I had a good grasp of the concept and did a good job presenting it. I would guess my grade to be B+ to a B. Much higher than the C- I got from my out of touch grad student teacher.
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