To this day, I'm not sure if both of my advisers have been present in one room to see me speak at a conference. Although I would prefer it in order to receive their full criticism. Even then, only one of them did see my Australia talk (out of a total of four talks) and the other is still at zero. But I suppose they really have no reason to attend given that they've seen all the work, the slides, and I've practiced in front of them before. I wonder if they did attend, would I actually end up doing worse from all the added nervousness.
This time one of them was leaving Thursday morning, while the other had his talk scheduled at the exact same time at 8:30. While I was hoping to have a larger crowd, especially those who work in the similar area of recrystallization and grain growth as well as annealing twin formation in the context of grain boundary engineering, going on the last day AND the first thing in the morning is never easy... (That being said, I do know people who work in my area who gave talks later in the afternoon, but unfortunately they didn't show).
The room consisted of primarily the other presenters of the symposium and then my colleagues (really I should just say friends). Overall the talk went extremely well, and although no thought provoking questions were asked, the audience was definitely curious. My classmate, who has no idea what I work on, said in one talk he got a really good idea and fully understood.
I emailed my advisers to let them know of the audiences' questions and response. And one of them informed that someone else (a professor) in the room thought I did a good job. Furthermore the professor even offered to ultrasonic fatigue some samples (although in all honest we're not so much concerned on the actual performance of these materials, but just characterization). So again, something must've gone correctly.
One thing I did keep telling myself was that if one has done good work, then others will come and listen. No one will criticize good work and will only aim to help build on it via questions and discussion. Repeating that in my head helped reduced the nervousness (which I still have every time I've talked), and despite stuttering and mumbling a little, everything went well.
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