Research Presentation#

Making clear, engaging, and pursuasive oral representations is one of the keys to staying competitive, especially in front of people who (most likely) do not share your values.

Requirements#

clear: focus, support, coherence

engaging: [situation, ]complextity, [question, ]resolution

pursuasive: catchy, trusted, desiring, safe, reasonable, pushing, evaluating

Audience and Requirements#

The first step of knowing your audience is to assume an edge case that no one shares your values. All three requirements need to be satisfied. Second, adjust the strategies based on how much background that your audience knows and how much values that your audience shares with you.

Duration, Content, and Requirements#

Duration Content Requirements
1m elevator pitch (w/o slides) cep
1m weekly update (w/o slides) c
5m weekly update (w/ slides) c
15m conference talk (w/ slides) ce
45m invited talk (w/ slides) cep
45m job talk (w/ slides) cep
90m lecture (w/ slides) ce

Steps#

  1. Design (see above).
  2. Make slides.
  3. Practice.
  4. Dry run, answer questions, and take feedback.
  5. Perform.

Make slides#

Susan McConnell (Stanford): Designing effective scientific presentations: We are good listeners and let's transfer the knowledge to make slides

  • One slide, one topic sentence, 4-5 sentences, 1 minute
  • Consider the attention curve
    • https://ethos3.com/hacking-the-audience-attention-curve/
    • Split into parts and summary the key message for each part
    • Write down the key messages and then fill up the rest
    • Highlight the key messages with both text and soundtrack
  • A simple style
    • One font (Calibri)
    • Large font size (24, 28, 36, 52) and less text
    • Sentence in one line
    • Built-in list
    • Box for the key summary
    • Backup slides
  • Animation
    • Too much text and show them one by one

Practice#

  • Per slide: start from the last sentence for the last slide
  • All slides: control speed and remember everything

Dry-run, prepare and answer questions, and take feedback#

  • Have eye contact, be confident
  • That's a good/interesting question/Let me rephrase your questions. Give a high level overview of your answer in the beginning and then give the remaining details of your answer.