I spoke about getting good at inventing. I drew on my personal experience starting in high school, as an almost accidental college student, and then throughout a life built on these foundations.
I listened to students present their work in progress, answer questions, and take suggestions from other groups. I spoke after them but began by describing building and tuning Glory from suggestions from my wife and son. See American Glory
I recalled following my older brother Peter who was an electronics whizz in high school. I tagged along as he visited Chuck, a few years older still, who had a nice home electronics shop up the street. See What's in a Resistor?
I set out to explain the fabulous advance in technology in my lifetime and how knowing a little more than average about it fueled my career. See Life with Transistors
I drew a variety of contrasts, each a metaphor for the others. This left me with many points to enlarge, time permitting.
I wanted to talk about signals, modeling signals with random variables, and how I came to appreciate this approach as a college student. I started with a series of hacks, all with signals.
I switched gears. I wanted to talk about modeling signals and especially how continuous distributions, like the normal curve, can be smooth even when the signal isn't.
I warned people that I'd be showing some programming. I'd already decided that I wanted to explain the invention of Uno the Integer so this would be warm up.
I digressed for only a moment to explain that I still did this kind of modeling in my day job. See Personatron
I was ready for compounding shell programming with txtzyme to animate a gaussian character called Uno. This required two steps: controlling LEDs with txtzyme and and animating the fuzzy being with normal curves in two dimensions.
I rushed through this showing videos. The device itself had disassembled in transit so it wasn't looking so good. I also should have brought a longer USB cord as I anticipated in order to hold Uno up.
I closed by returning to first supply v. control and then invention v. entrepreneurism. I had hoped to make some profound points, a bit of be-like-me too, but no time for that. I finished on time which left the students and staff still feeling good about the good parts so we'll call that success.