A DISC dress-rehersal was held on the University of Houston campus last Saturday (Jan 28). This was unofficial, but we still had 57 students. Food and drink were sponsored by Apache (thanks to Tad Smith) and all arrangements were made by the SEG student section, the SEG Wavelets. In particular, great credit is due to Wavelets lecture coordinator Antonio Sierra, an excellent and energetic organizer.
This was the first time I had presented the entire course material. Although a day earlier, I gave a 1-hour overview in departmental seminar.
So how did it go? Well, we finished on time which was a relief. You never know with new material. I got a lot of good feedback from students and quite a few questions. It is a course that spans many, seemingly-disconnected, topics: vibroseis, thin beds, Biot waves, anisotropy, attenuation, wavelet transforms, etc. No one complained, but seems like I need to do a better job keeping all these topics in perspective, they are all pieces of the dispersion puzzle. Hey, maybe I could use a jigsaw puzzle slide.
(The official DISC book is still in production, but we managed to splice together PDF files from galley proofs and print a draft book for participants. I'm hoping SEG will recognize the important role this audience played by giving each attending student a real DISC book when they are ready. If not, are there any donors out there who would like to cover the book cost? Nice way to impress 60 potential employees. Or maybe the SEG Foundation?)
Some very good, specific suggestions were made. Since the slides contain every figure in the book (in order), but also other figures, it was sugessted I have an easily-recognizable symbol and number on slide figures that are in the book. This would help with book navigation. Similarly, it was suggested to add equation numbers in the slides that sync with the book. Luanxiao Zhao pointed out an error in my definition of the Biot characteristic frequency; many thanks for the bug report.
The dress-rehersal was, it turned out, badly needed. The slides had many spelling errors (spell checker had been turned off), and many annoying animations were present that need to be removed.
At the top of this post is a class picture. It is a bit blurry, but you get the idea. A high-res version will be uploaded when I get it from Antonio.
Thanks to all the UH students for a great class!!
Let's finish with a slide the audience seemed to enjoy. Ciao
