Presentation Tips

From the many talks and presentations I’ve attended in the past several years, I have a few tips for presenters. These range from the appearance of the slides to the content and structure of the talk itself.

• Slide contents:
  • Don’t put up a slide with loads of graphics – parse them out on different slides, or pop them up one at a time as you talk about them.
  • Don’t put things on a slide that you don’t want to talk about – make it look like you put this talk together for this audience, and not that you’re just recycling something for a longer time slot.
• Slide layout/appearance:
  • Use a solid color as a background for all writing; a patterned background or a picture will have light and dark spots that make any font color hard to read.
  • Do not use red font on a dark blue background and don’t use yellow font on a white background. In fact, only use yellow if you’re using a black or dark blue background.
  • If in doubt, use black and white – this will make a better impression than a bad color combination.
• Talk contents/structure:
  • The best talks tell a story. They start with a little bit of background on the topic, then show the current results, and finally put them in the context of the background research. Most audiences don’t need all of the gory details of your research; only very specialized audiences need that. Give a good overview, and that will leave time for the context and summary.
  • Plan for your time slot – if you talk faster than the speed of light, no information is conveyed. Less is more, and a good story will stick with your audience better than a rapid-fire collection of disconnected bullet points.
  • Leave enough time for your summary. Don’t just put up a summary page during the question period. This leaves your audience with the choice of reading your summary points or listening to the questions.
• General comments:
  • Use the laser pointer judiciously, and don’t look away while pointing at something, because you’re more likely than not to dance the pointer around randomly.
  • Speak up and speak clearly.
  • Don’t mumble the end of your sentences – the audience doesn’t know what you’re thinking, and we need to hear every word. If you aren’t sure of something, don’t say it.
  • If you have a microphone, don’t be afraid of it! And make sure you put it on your “screen side”. That is, if you’re constantly turning to point things out on a screen, make sure the microphone is on that side, otherwise your voice will fade in and out as you point out important things on your slides.
  • Don’t sound bored with your own topic. If you aren’t at least a little bit excited about it, the audience won’t be, either.
  • Walking around the audience is just weird – it’s a clever way of keeping the audience’s eyes off of you, but is really uncomfortable for the audience.
  • Dress like you care just a little bit about what you’re doing; for heaven’s sake, wear pants that cover your crack (no kidding).

Tags: grad life