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Presentation Tips
There is no one right way to give a
talk, but learning from other people’s experiences can save you much time
and trouble. What follows are some points to keep in mind whenever you’re
going to talk with other people about your work. It’s a distillation of a
lot of experience - from other faculty, from other students, and from
me.
Dr Joyce Moser - moser@stanford.edu
I. Introduction - The Road
Map
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The introduction is the first
thing your audience hears, but it is often is the last thing you will pull
together. You need to be at home enough with the materials first so that
you can decide which elements you are going to include.
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The most important part of your
introduction is the road map, which identifies those elements. It’s
generally harder for people to remember what they hear than what they read, and
the road map compensates for the differences by signposting what’s coming
up next. You will have an extremely receptive and empathetic audience in this
class, but they still need the headsup from you on your
presentation.
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To do a good road map you
should be more explicit than you think you really need to be. If there are two
or three topics, say so, If there are several areas and you’re only
addressing some of them, say so. This is at least as much for you as for your
audience - once you can do the road map it means that you yourself know what
you’re doing. The reverse is also true.
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Having said that, there are a
lot of different ways to start a talk - a question, an anecdote, a
surprising fact, a photograph, an image, a question, a joke if you are brave,
etc. You can also start by saying, “My topic is x and what I’m going
to talk about is abc.”
II. Reality
Principles
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You will never get everything
you want to into your presentation. This is possibly the most important
thing you can learn, not only for this special presentation but for all the
other you will give in your career. It is the least popular advice I give
because the more you know, the more invested you are in the material, and the
more you will want to tell people about it. But editing yourself is the biggest
single difference between a good talk and a not-good talk.
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You’re the teacher.
That means you get to decide what you want your listeners to take away from
your presentation. In this case you are speaking to your peers on a subject of
mutual interest, but everyone will be presenting a particular part of a much
larger story.
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Here are some criteria to help you
decide what to include and what to leave out: What is most interesting to
you? What do you really want your audience to learn? What is critical
information?
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For future reference, no
matter who your audience is, never condescend to anyone; a person can be
totally ignorant about your field and still be very smart. So generally
speaking, if there is background they doesn’t have and needs in order to
appreciate what you’re getting at, give it as briefly as you
can.
III. Looking Good
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Have notes that you can use as
prompts, so you can look at your audience. Whatever form your notes take -
index cards, regular paper, etc. - matters less that the fact that they need to
be legible to you. Print or type in big letters, and double or triple space so
you can just glance down and know where you are. Number and staple
pages.
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Good Illustrations are great;
bad ones are worse than nothing - much worse. Illustrations condense
information in a visually attractive way; they break up text; they come in a
lot of different forms—not only technical information, but paintings,
photographs, and any other visual. If the images you choose are is very rich in
information, you need to explain more, or zoom in on what part of your slide
you want everyone to focus on, or simplify the graphics. Please remember to
subtract your explanation time from the total time you have for your
talk.
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Just in case, consider
printing out copies of your PowerPoint slides.
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Speaking of PowerPoint - Do
beautiful, clear PowerPoint. You already have inherently attractive
material, so don’t get in its way. You’ve seen enough bad examples to
know what to avoid: too many slides; way too much type (your audience will try
bravely to read all of it and meanwhile they won’t be listening to you);
bizarre type; slides that are hard to see; colors that give your viewers a
headache; graphics of any kind that are visually too complicated or take
forever to explain; cute but irrelevant applications, like the laugh track or
the applause track (no kidding); illustrations that have nothing to do with
anything but you like them; Grand Theft Auto sound effects,
etc.
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Don’t memorize your
presentation. You don’t have to say it precisely the way you rehearsed
it and if you gave the same talk ten times it would be different each time
anyway.
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Parenthetically, having all of
your text on your laptop can keep you from connecting with your audience
and if you are reading your notes off your laptop, your audience will be
looking at the top of your head instead of seeing your eyes.
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Keep sentences shorter than
you might in a written version, for the same reason that you spell out clearly
what you are going to do; your audience won’t be able to remember a lot of
long clauses or paragraphs.
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Even in a short talk, you need to
remind your audience of what you just did and what’s coming next. When
you finish the first point, let your listeners know that you did, and that now
you’re going on to the second point. Sign posting for them will help
them remember what you want them to remember.
IV. Practice Makes Perfect, or at
Least Pretty Good
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You need to practice out
loud - for many reasons: you have no idea how much time passes when
you’re speaking, and you don’t know how you sound, if you’re
talking very fast, if you left out something important whose absence would
confuse people, if you are unconsciously doing something distracting, like
rocking all the time, etc.
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If you suspect that you say
“like” or “you know” or some other variety of Valley Speak
every few seconds, or you’re not sure, practicing seriously with someone
else will alert you; informality is fine but verbal tics are distracting to
your listeners.
V. Being a
Professional
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Stay within the time limits;
they are a huge help to you because they tell you how many or how few points
you can make. When you know you have, for example, 8 minutes, including
your opening and closing, you have to get into the material immediately, and
that you can only raise a couple of points in any depth. 15 minutes is a good
standard length for a talk and it gives you more time, which you may use it to
address an extra area or go more into depth on one or two
areas.
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Time limits force you to
choose and doing that will stand you in good stead in every job you do.
There is no field in which running over your time works to your advantage
professionally.
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If you forget everything
else, this is the big cliché but it’s also really good
advice.
Tell them what you're going to tell them.
Tell them.
Tell
them what you told them.
"I’m not as committed to this last
point as I used to be; your closing could include what surprised you, where you
think research might go next, etc."
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