Well, J. Patel "was ready" for Dr. Hemami. Patel is a distinguished Federal judge who attends and speaks at a lot of lunceons in the Bay Area. She's apparently very interested in encouraging women to study for the professions. She is aware that women now comprise over 50% of law school graduates. So, immediately after her introduction, and before Dr. Hemami could begin her presentation, the judge asked her point blank: "What percentage of your electrical engineering classes are women? How do we get more women to go into engineering?" Dr. Hemani said that unfortunately it just isn't a profession that seems to attract many women. Only about 10% of her students are women. And J. Patel commented, "That's too bad. We've done well in law school, where women represent over 50% of enrollment -- but that's an area we need improvement in."

So right from the beginning, Dr. Hemami established a good rapport with J. Patel. The judge asked these questions of her because she is genuinely interested in the subject. And she knew she had a real EXPERT standing before her in Dr. Hemami.

(COMMENT: This is one of the benefits of being a judge that should not be overlooked. Sitting on the Federal bench, you get intimately involved in numerous constitutional, societal, technological, civil, criminal and business issues and current events. You are constantly learning! If you are a person with an inquisitive mind, such as Judge Patel, you quite naturally WANT TO LEARN all you can about a subject, in the limited time you have on the case. So she peppered Hemami with so many questions (and Hemami obliged with detailed answers) that the judge had to tell our expert witness that, in the interest of time, she would refrain from asking more questions. Bottom line? J. Patel RELISHED the chance to engage Dr. Hemami in converstion, and LEARN FROM HER!)

Contrast that with Apple's presentation. As BurstingSquidoo has so accurately reported, Powers did the whole presentation without once involving his "expert" witness, Joel Halpern. Not even to ask him a question. Powers was the "expert" for this presentation. And he makes for a poor teacher! His "style" was in stark contrast to that of Dr. Hemami, who moved through her presentation with a nice even progression, building the levels of complexity one step at a time, and enabling the listeners (and most importantly, the judge) to comprehend the technology. After all, Hemami IS a teacher!

Powers, however, sped through complex parts of his presentation too fast. You couldn't fully grasp his points at times, because he moved too fast -- exempli gratia, "multiplexing" -- which is a huge part of Apple's case! I, for one, didn't get anything out of his presentation -- although I was trying to, because I want to understand better how multiplexing, in Apple's view, contrasts with the Burst technology (they really are totally separate!), and WHAT IS THE POINT THAT APPLE WANTS TO MAKE WITH MULTIPLEXING? I guess we'll have to wait for a good "lesson" on next Thursday, but today's presentation was a total waste of time, as far as I'm concerned. (I took almost 4 pages of notes from Hemami, and only 1 1/2 pages from the Powers presentation!)