Projects Week: Visuals!
“Visuals!” Bree thought to herself. The second that John had put up that diagram of his stupid pens, Bree realized that she had forgotten one very important aspect of her presentation: visuals. Kevin was at the front of the kitchen now presenting his project, but she could barely keep her mind on it.
“Random, when I thought that you were going to start competing with Zaunter, I started working on an algorithm to speed Internet download and upload times. I knew that Jerry had an amazing algorithm for storage, but I didn’t want to focus on that aspect of the equation. The reason I never bothered using Zaunter for my own personal backups is that is takes SO long to send all my data over the Internet. I’m sure that is the reason that many people have not adopted Zaunter for their personal backups.” Kevin brought up an ANIMATED slide on his computer showing a little computer sending information to a picture of the world. The little blips moved slowly. Kevin had visuals. What the heck is the matter with me?!
“My algorithm that I have created could speed up the Internet up to 100 times faster than it is now with few changes in the infrastructure that we already have in place.” Now, his little slide was moving blips faster from the computer to the planet. And now he was explaining how he would be able to do it. Another slide with two people talking on telephones!
“Back in the fifties, you might be talking on the telephone and hear another conversation taking place. They wouldn’t be able to hear you, but you could hear these strangers talking to each other.” His slide changed showing four people talking with intersecting lines. “They used to call this crosstalk. This is what is happening on our Internet connections right now. This crosstalk shows up as noise on our current DSL lines and reduces the speed of our connections. My algorithm is able to recognize the noise and increase the speed of the data flow.” His next slide was ALSO animated and knocked out the second pair of talkers.
Now Randy was asking REALLY technical questions about the algorithm and the Thunder Brothers were asking if it would work on satellite Internet. Before Bree knew it, Randy was reaching his hand into the bowl for the next name. Please don’t let it be me. Please let me be tomorrow or something. “Bree.” Randy read the name off the paper and Bree walked up to the front of the room with her computer.
It’s not like you haven’t prepared, Bree. Come on! Balls of steel! You can do this! Just show them what you’re talking about on your own computer. The hardest part will be working backwards. Start! They’re waiting for you to start! Make it simple enough for the Thunder Brothers to understand and you’ll win this.
“Right now, social networks are where IM was a few years ago. If you had an IM account with AOL, it wouldn’t contact your friends on Yahoo!.” Oh my God! I’m losing the Thunder Brothers! What should I do? Bree took a big breath and turned her computer toward Sierra, but Random’s wife looked pale and distracted. “Sierra, are you alright?” Not even the embarrassment of a blush brought color to her face and suddenly Random and Kevin’s focus were on Sierra instead of Bree. Random faced his wife. “You look like you’re about to faint. What’s the matter?!” Sierra touched her forehead. “I’m alright. I just forgot to eat breakfast before my run this morning and it’s almost lunchtime.”
Kevin grabbed Sierra’s arm, “You ran this morning? Your Nike+ says you haven’t run since the end of February.” Bree could hear the accusation in Kevin’s voice and the shame in Sierra’s, “I gave my Nike+ to Angie. I thought if I wasn’t tracking it, I could keep it under control.” Bree looked over at the Thunder Brothers, but they seemed just as confused as her.
Kevin took Sierra by the arm and lifted her up, escorting her out the front door with Random right behind them. Sometimes it was easy to forget Kevin was such a little guy when he could command a room like that. Bree looked over at the Thunder Brothers. James’ scar on his lip was quivering. “Do you think they’re coming back?” Bree sighed. “I hope not.”
A special thank you to Dr. John Papandriopoulos for his idea for speeding up the Internet: