Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with demonstration

Hey, can I Yelp your faction?

evil holiday magic — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:02:43 -0800

Where to find upcoming protests in Los Angeles? I don't want to delve too deeply into a specific movement at this point (call me a dilettante, though I've been there, and done that), but I'm interested in lending my presence to left wing protests and rallies (anti-privatization, pro-gay marriage, pro-socialized medicine etc.) in Los Angeles.

The ("Anonymous") anti-Scientology protests were organized and scheduled (at least in part) via an online forum. Is there something like this for other subjects, or even a site that compiles many different upcoming political demonstrations according to area?

Help me find hard-hitting facts on the recent financial collapse please

willie11 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:47:33 -0800

Please help me find facts about the banking/economic crisis and the impact of the financial meltdown for a demonstration against the no-strings-attached billions for banks while Americans suffer. Your help will be rewarded with a just and fair financial system that works for all Americans and not just Wall Street. Thanks so much! I'm helping organize one of the April 11th rallies for A New Way Forward, previously discussed on Metafilter here. These rallies are being staged across the country by grassroots activists and concerned citizens to demand a restructuring of the failed financial institutions and an end to the no-strings-attached bailout billions that have failed to help anyone but the insolvent banks and financial institutions that put us in this economic crisis in the first place.

Part of our demonstration in Raleigh, NC will potentially involve a "nest-egg" hunt to play off the Easter holiday weekend where participants will search for their now-emaciated financial nest eggs. We're trying to fill these eggs with hard-hitting facts about the impact of America's oligarchical financial system that has amassed unprecedented wealth at the top and left the rest of America on the brink of financial ruin. We're hoping to find 25 - 40 hard-hitting facts along the lines of:

Bank of America has collected $45 billion in federal bailout funds - your taxpayer money - yet they plan to lay off over 30,000 workers while handing out $5.2 million in corporate bonuses.

I'm really hoping for more personal facts about foreclosure & bankruptcy rates to contrast with the lavish spending and counter-productive investments these groups are using our bailout funds for. I'm sure there's a list of these somewhere and I hate to ask others do my work for me, but this demonstration is truly a grassroots movement and, as such, we're all doing four people's jobs at once. Your help with this will be so appreciated. Thanks!

--- Willie

Looking for hands-on, IT-related demo for middle schoolers.

buck09 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:33:08 -0800

What kind of hands on activity would be good for a group of middle-schoolers interested in a career in IT? A colleague and I have about 20 minutes of time with 8 groups of middle schoolers at a local career fair. 10 minutes is devoted to Q&A and should also include a hands-on type activity.

We should have internet access via 3G wireless card. We're pretty geeky in terms of doing tech (hardware, development, etc.), but we would like something that doesn't require more than 2-3 hours of prep time.

Any suggestions?

Please help a novice do a software demo

Valuev — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:44:30 -0800

I have to do a demo of a content management system. I was never completely proficient with the tool to begin with, and I haven't used it for two years. I'm not a programmer. I've never done a software demo before. And I have only the weekend to prepare. I need your help. I've been asked to give a demo of a content management system for a client who might be interested in buying and repurposing it. We developed it for another client about four years ago, but it hasn't been in use for about two years. The original developer left, and our remaining technical people don't have the presentation skills(or the language skills) needed to competently deliver the demo to this particular client... so I'm the lucky bastard who gets to do it.

I was only a user of this tool, not a developer, and I have zero technical insight into the thing. To top it off, I've never done a software demo before. I've sat through a few so I know basically what should happen, but without any real in-depth technical knowledge of the tool I'm not really sure how to approach this, or even where to start.

So I guess my question is simply: how do I do this? The good news is, the people I'll be demoing this for aren't highly technical either, and don't have any real knowledge of CMS tools, so hopefully they're not expecting perfection. But any tips or advice I could get on how not to make a total idiot of myself would be greatly appreciated.

Demonstrations in Bangkok

mrunderhill — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:59:41 -0800

I'm flying to Bangkok tomorrow morning. What should I know about the current situation? I booked this months ago and am most definitely going, but I'd like to know what to expect. From what I gather these demonstrations are generally peaceful. But there are anecdotal reports of violent clashes with riot police..

Are there tanks roaming the streets of Bangkok?

Do you think BKK will remain open?

Thanks!

Looking for a gibberishy fake product demonstration...

disclaimer — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:42:12 -0800

Somewhere on the wide internet is a video of a fake product demonstration that's complete and total doublespeak. And I can't find it. Could use a little google-fu from the crew, here. I give training seminars. The video in question is from a large company and is considered to be a classic of sorts. It's a product demonstration of a fake product that devolves rather quickly into total tech-nonsense. I'd like to use some of the content in my seminars, but I can't find it (because I can't remember any of the details).
Can you help?

What can I learn in 3 minutes?

i8ny3x — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:36:11 -0800

I'm in the second round of interviews for this competitive science summer camp teaching position. This includes presenting a three-minute lesson on anything in particular that targets K-5 kids. My problem: I've never taught kids before, and I'm pretty sure those I'm up against have. What do you think would be a good, short demonstration that gives kids some hands-on experience and that would also blow their minds? Difficulty: It should be relative simple to perform, plus I need to know how to explain that phenomena in simple terms.

I've looked at several teaching-related sites,but most require something that might take longer than 3 minutes to set up and demonstrate. Or maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places.

Thanks in advance!

Ideas for a mad science wedding?

fermion — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 18:57:58 -0800

Can anyone suggest interesting science-flavored demonstrations, experiments, or spectacles to be performed at a wedding? My friends have asked me to be the "official mad scientist/busker" at their upcoming wedding. I've been trying to think of ways to fulfill this somewhat open-ended assignment. I will try to acquire some liquid nitrogen with which to make ice cream and the like (can anyone suggest a good source for the stuff near Denver?) but I want to do something a bit more pyrotechnic to entertain the guests.

Guidelines (feel free to post things that violate these if they are especially cool):

1. It shouldn't be too messy, since everyone will be wearing their Nice Things.
2. I will have about two days to prepare (the wedding is in two months, but I will be out of the country until a few days beforehand.)
3. Crowd-pleasing (either very cool-looking or edible) is more important than educational, although the latter is obviously a bonus.
4. Ideally, the materials should not be too expensive or difficult to obtain. (Alas, I mourn the days when I had access to fully stocked collegiate labs!) Things that are available by mail-order are fine.

Wow me

rabbitsnake — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:09:14 -0800

I am looking for examples of really well done, well produced online product demonstrations. Particularly if they are demos of web-based products or services. I am looking for production quality, I don't care about the product. Thanks!

Abortion and activism

arcticwoman — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:04:32 -0800

People pay too much attention to abortion. I generally agree with this; however, I find myself championing the pro-choice perspective on a red-neck campus in southern Alberta. I am helping out at an impromptu table demonstration tomorrow and I need some ideas. What kind of info should I include on my posters? What questions should I be prepared to answer? Please don't answer if you are trying to engage me in abortion polemics, I will have more than enough of that tomorrow. Please do answer if you have serious issues you think pro-choicers should address, that could help me formulate my position.

VNC for Dummies

SpecialK — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 19:00:29 -0800

I need to demo computer programs for clients (many of whom are not computer-savvy), but they're behind a firewall and I'm behind a firewall. They're also on a variety of platforms, and I'm on Linux. I need suggestions on how to set up a remote demonstration (where we can both control the mouse) so that we can both access it. I could set up a hole in my firewall and serve VNC off of my box or an intermediate box, but there's the issue of walking them through the set up of the VNC client. I could use the Armadillo Project, but I'm on linux (and dont' want to reboot to windoze every time I need to do a demo...), and my clients are on all three big OSes, including Mac, Linux, and Windows.

What would be really cool is if I could package up a really small VNC client for each of the OSes that my clients use that would include the configuration settings, and then we could both connect to a server in a DMZ on my network. But among all the flack of other demonstration programs that are on the market that partially do what I want, I can't find one that will do exactly what I want... or even come close enough to it to be acceptable.
Getting them set up without a lot of "No, now click on the 'IP Address' menu option" is the main priority, followed by security on my end.

Identifying a religious order

cmyk — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:35:28 -0800

When shooting photos of the protest outside Schiavo's hospice in Pinellas, I encountered a distinctively ornamented religious group. I've never seen anything like this before, and Google is inconclusive -- an ID would be appreciated. Pictures inside. There were six men in suits. Three were holding a sort of platform with a large statue of the Virgin Mary on it. They were chanting/reciting/praying something (I am not religious enough to know what) and I didn't want to interrupt them to ask who they were. I looked at some of the AP feeds for the event, later on, and found another photograph which, I think, showed the tail end of their procession.

First photo, the men carrying their statue.
Enlargement of the pin on the red sashes. From above photo.
AP image of what I believe is the same procession, after they'd passed us by. I think the red banner with the lion was theirs. I don't think the Mary of Guadalupe image is theirs, since they didn't have it when I saw them on their way in, but again I am not sure.

Thanks, in advance!

Demonstrating RSS Offline

bingo — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:07:57 -0800

Say I need to demonstrate RSS on a computer that is not online. I create an xml file on my hard drive that contains the item 'headlines' and the urls they should lead to. I point firefox to that file as a 'live bookmark' and FeedReader to that file as a feed, but neither of them will show the headlines I created in the heading sidebar. Why not? How can I create my own 'feed' and demonstrate it without actually having that xml file on another computer?

Browser-based Demos

sauril — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 09:46:21 -0800

I'm looking for online demonstration software. Specifically, something that will allow the ones watching the software demonstration to do so from their browser. Cost is an issue, but I don't need free. [more inside] Basically, the functionality that I'm looking for is that the user will go to a specific url and will see what's on our computer here as it happens. Voice will happen over the phone.

So far I've looked at Live Meeting, but it's way overkill, and expensive. I have root access to a LAMP box, and can run an IIS box as well if that's the best way to do things.