Sheldon Jacobson and OR Videos

The October, 2007 issue of OR/MS Today has a short article by Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois on creating videos about the work he and his lab does. There are two videos: one on pediatric vaccines and one on airline security (I love the variety of work you can do in OR!) (they are a little slow-loading). It is too bad that they aren’t YouTube videos, where more people can see them (and the technology allows better incremental loading), but I am extremely impressed with the professionalism that went into the videos. Of course, it is not cheap:

When it comes to video production, you get what you pay for. As a rule, the videos cost $1,000 per minute of the final product. Using a cell phone camera to film yourself speaking about your work will result in predictably poor quality. The professionals in the video production industry — the producer, videographer and editor — have a wealth of experience (and some interesting tricks of the trade) to make you and your work come to life.

Check out Sheldon’s page for more about the impact this work (and others he has done) has had.

INFORMS and YouTube videos

INFORMS has some videos on YouTube from the recent Edelman Awards. This is great for the field. The three videos are

  1. General OR, and the Edelman Award
  2. The 2007 Award (on more efficient ways to attack prostate cancer)
  3. A detailed video on the 2006 award (Warner Robbins on repairing planes)

So far the videos have been accessed a couple of dozen times each. Pass along the pointers, and let’s get that count up!

Videos and Operations Research

Dick Larson has a very nice editorial in the April 2007 OR/MS Today on the use of videos in disseminating information about our field. One big point he makes is that the Edelman videos, a tremendous resource for our field, are not easily and freely available. This frustrates the heck out of me too! I do not understand why videos of the contestants are not up on YouTube right after the competition. There are some issues of ownership of the various INFORMS entities, but some INFORMS President will eventually be able to work them out and suddenly the world will be able to see how amazing we are.

Until then, Larson has another article on MIT World, where MIT professors give lectures on various topics. Arnie Barnett and Yossi Sheffi, along with Larson, are among those giving OR-oriented talks.

Incidentally, there are some “Operations Research” videos at YouTube but only 8 at the moment. Let’s see if things improve in the next year.