10 tips for adding polish to presentations

transcript

Adding polish to presentations10 tips to make your talk shine

Keith Bradnam# Author: Keith Bradnam, Genome Center, UC Davis# This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.# 2012

3 things that your talk should be

1) Understandable

If people don’t understand it, what’s the point in them being there? A waste of time for them *and* you.

2) Memorable

People may understand what you’re talking about while you’re saying it, but if they forget it right away then that’s not good either. You want your talk to be remembered by others, long after you give it.

3) Enjoyable

Many people never even think about making their talks enjoyable. It *may* be enough just to present the facts, but if you can entertain people at the same time then why not do that as well. Sometimes all this takes is showing a degree of passion.

What will be the best part of your presentation?

Your results?

Your visual content?

Your spoken content?

Your sparkling personality?

Don’t just worry about the actual results/data that you have to present. The whole package is important: the data, the slides, how you speak, and how your personality comes across. Deficiencies in any one of these areas can make a dent in an otherwise good talk.

THE PERFECT

SLIDES

DELIVERY CHARISMA

Not many people make fantastic looking slides, and have a great style of public speaking, *and* have bags of charisma to boot. Steve Jobs was one such person, and he’s a great example of someone who gave flawless presentations time after time. Always the results of practice and hard work.

Some things to consider before you present

Things to do before your talk

Think & make notes Write plan Make slides Practice

Plan your talk *before* you fire up Keynote/Powerpoint! Think about what you want to say, and what message your talk should have. Most importantly, allow time to practice your talk. The above figures are approximately how much time I might devote to something like a lab talk.

Who is your audience?Venue Preparation time

(expected)Preparation time

(observed)

Lab talk 3–7 days 2–24 hours

Department meeting 2–4 weeks 1–2 days

Conference presentation 1–2 months 1–2 weeks

Preparation time obviously depends on the nature of the talk. The bigger the talk, the more time you should allow. Most people prepare talks at the last minute, and/or work through the night to get their slides finished. This is usually very obvious to the audience!

Two types of questions

“That’s some really cool science...what does this mean for x, y, or z?”

“Could you clarify how you did...?”“What’s the rationale for doing...?”“Which program did you use to do...?”“What species do you work on?”“Was that RNA or DNA that you were using?”

GOOD TALK

BAD TALKTwo types of questions can be asked at talks. The first category is a sign of a good talk. The second category is a sign that your talk didn’t explain things in enough detail.

10 tips for a better presentation

1) Be preparedThings to do before your talk

Before your talk...Research your presentation environment:

projector

computer

version of Powerpoint/Keynote

pointer?

microphone?

Don’t turn up and be disappointed to find out that they don’t have a computer capable of handling your slides. Do you know if you have a lectern to stand at? Will you assume that a pointer is available? Will the lighting in the room make your slides hard to read? You should check all of these things in advance.

Before your talk...

Silence your cell phone

Have a plan B!

Save a PDF copy of talk

Put backup copy on flash drive and/or online

Could you do your talk without slides?

Don’t rely on one copy of your talk. All storage media can – and will – fail at some point. If you really know your material, you should be able to fall back and give a good summary of the material using a white board or even just from a spoken summary of the key points.

2) Eliminate distractionsWhat don’t you want your audience to see?

If the first thing people see about your talk is all of the crud and mess that lives on your computer, then you are already lowering expectations before you even open your mouth.

Lots of bullet points

But you’re about to make a big point

Very important to keep focus

Don’t distract the audience at this point

Typical slide during talk

Pop-up alerts in the middle of your talk? Classy, real classy.

Distractions

ON A MAC, USE A GUEST ACCOUNT!

Incoming Skype calls? Such things will happen if you don’t quit any application you don’t need. On a Mac, simply turn on a Guest account and use that for your presentation. You can guarantee there will be no other software which will interrupt your talk.

3) Don’t mix stylesChoose one style and stick to it

Ugly slides

If you needlessly change your fonts between slides...

...or even within slides

And if you use lots of different colorsor font sizes...

It’s amazing how many people just throw slides together from different presentations. I call this the ‘instant headache’ effect.

IT LOOKS UGLY!

Some color combinations will induce nausea.

Templates

Avoid out-of-date templates

Some color combinations are a good way to let people know that you first learnt how to use Powerpoint circa 1995

A little more advice on style

Only use a few font sizes

Be consistent with text alignment

It’s okay to change the font size to improve word wrapping

Sentences that have just one word that wraps to another line can make slides look ugly. You are not legally obliged to use the same font size for every slide. Sometimes bumping a font down by one point is enough to eliminate word wrap.

A little more advice on style

Use only a few font sizes

Be consistent with text alignment

It’s okay to change the font size to improve word wrapping

The same slide, with some consistency.

Transitions

Is your talk divided into sections?

Will people know when you switch sections?

If you talk about more than one subject, or even if you have different sections to your talk (which you probably should have), then will people know when you transition from one part to another?

Mixing slides from different presentations

Using a different colored/styled slide makes for an easy visual cue to your audience that you have moved on. This is very useful if people in your audience were waiting for ‘the next section’ and were not paying much attention to your opening slides. This can sometimes be a place where you use slide animations effectively. I.e. only animate slides which indicate transitions between sections

Older data from my boss

• My boss has some results that use a different slide template

• It has different colors and fonts

• It might even contain irrelevant data

• I’m too lazy to change it though

1 2 3 4 5

Interest in talk

Number of different slide designs

Don’t include slides from other presentations (e.g. from your boss or lab colleague) without first changing the theme of the that slide to match the theme of your slides. Be prepared to edit and remove objects from these slides which are no longer relevant to the point you are making.

4) Use imagesWe are visual creatures

I studied conserved genes in:

Arabidopsis thaliana

Mus musculus

Xenopus tropicalis

Gallus gallus

Does your audience always need to read lists of things?

DataI studied conserved genes in:

Arabidopsis thaliana

Mus musculus

Xenopus tropicalis

Gallus gallus

Wouldn’t the addition of some pictures make the slide more appealing?

Maybe you don’t even need the text – you could still add text beneath pictures, but if there is an opportunity to use a picture, use it! We are visual creatures and having images on slides helps break up the monotony of the usual, text-heavy, talk.

Assessing methods of genome assembly

MONDAY 8/22/2011

Keith Bradnam

Korf Laboratory

Some people plaster their title slide with every piece of information they thing should go on there. Usually these end up looking horribly cluttered.

Assessing methods of genome assemblyKeith Bradnam

You could instead use a simpler opening slide...

Korf Laboratory, UC Davis Genome Center...and then use a separate slide to let people know where you work. And this is another example where you can easily throw in a pleasing picture.

Use a quotation

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Set the scene for your talk if possible. Is there a quotation or passage of text that helps to introduce the subject? People like to be eased in to subject matters with at least some introduction/background. Setting the scene gets people thinking about your material before you even show them any results.

Use a quotation

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

And if you do have quotes, make sure that the person in the picture looks like they are speaking the quote. This might require you to flip an image. This is not hard.

5) Reduce bullet pointsAnd reduce chance of people falling asleep

Death by bullet point

Some talks contain

so many bullet points

that it makes you

want to go out and

shoot something

Too short?

Download data

Process

You had better explain such things very clearly, otherwise slides like this are redundant.

Too long?

Need to obtain sequence data from suitable database in order to find set of intron sequences

A script was written to process sequences into suitable data format (process_data.pl)

All species that were investigated had data sets that did not produce any errors

Conversely, some people don’t like reading too much text. This still might be a preferred option though if English isn’t your native language and you want to be sure people understand you.

A happy compromise

Download intron data from GenBank

Process into new format

No species contained errors

Strike the right balance. Make sure what you say complements what’s on the screen, and doesn’t just reproduce it verbatim.

6) Avoid data overloadOnly show what needs to be shown

If you reproduce figures from published papers (or other sources), you are not required to show them all in one go.

MASKING USED TO HIDE PARTS OF IMAGE

Use image masks or crop images before you add them to your slide. Let people see just the parts that they need to see.

ADD SHAPES TO HIDE PARTS OF IMAGE

Alternatively, hide out parts of the image using white shapes and reveal them one at a time. This keeps the audience focused on one thing at a time.

Don’t look at the cheese

If you have lots of different things on one slide and they all appear at once, you will immediately ensure that many of the audience will be looking at different things.

And I bet you looked at the cheese didn’t you?

FIGURE 2

When you present things in a series of events, this is a great opportunity to animate each step.

I always use a wipe effect to reveal each element. In this case, the white rectangles that are hiding the objects would be revealed with a ‘wipe downwards’ effect.

7) Use your voiceYou have an instrument, learn how to play it

ACTORS

Presenting science data requires you to be a little bit of actor. Adopt a stage persona if that helps you. Most tips on acting apply to science presentations (project your voice, pause for dramatic effect etc.)

SALESPEOPLE

Equally, you have to be something of a car salesmen. You are selling data and need to make people understand why your results are important.

Vary pace & volume

Use pauses

Practice words you may be unfamiliar with

Avoid excessive reading of text

Be confident

Tips for speaking

Remind people of timing

Let people know if they can interrupt

Tell jokes?

Tell anecdotes?

Put people at ease

Don’t tell jokes if you are uncomfortable in doing so, and never say things which might be considered inappropriate. But a little levity goes a long way. If you are having a good time when you present your talk, this will come across to the audience.

8) ContentHow do you choose what to say?

Anatomy of a talk

Introduction Background Results Summary

Most people cram their talks full of results and leave little room for anything else.

Background material

Make sure you include sufficient background!!!

Make sure background is appropriate to audience

This is my number one problem with most science talks. Speakers are not respectful of the audience and dive straight into what they did without first setting the scene.

This good guy (Luke Skywalker) finds out that this bad guy (Darth Vader) is really his dad.

But Luke still becomes a Jedi and kicks his dad’s ass to piss off the Emperor

And the good guys blow up this Death Star thing and crush the evil Empire. Yay, the good guys win.

The End.

Imagine if someone described the Star Wars trilogy without making reference to the first film (Star Wars, episode III). This film is necessary to set up the whole story and make us sympathetic to the protagonists. Similarly, your talk should include a section which sets up your results.

9) Have a planDo you know how to get from A to B?

Tell a story

If you plan your talk before you make your slides you are much more likely to come up with a better flow to your whole presentation. It should have a beginning, middle, and end. Good talks even set up drama by revealing problems, and then add a resolution (how you overcame the problem).

Less is sometimes moreTalk 1 Talk 2 Talk 3

Result 1 Result 2 Background

Result 2 Result 1 Result 2

Result 3 Result 3 Result 3

Result 4 What this means What this means

Result 5 Where this is going

Where this is going

Too many talks are like Talk 1. All results. Talk 3 may contain less data, but the results will be discussed in the appropriate context and people will be more likely to remember the talk.

Make your talk flow

The order in which you produced results is not necessarily the order in which you present results!

Have a goal

What are the key ‘take home’ messages?

If you don’t know what they are...

...your audience won’t either

As you plan your talk, and as you make your slides, always ask yourself ‘why should the audience care about any of this?’

10) Practice!People will notice if you haven’t practiced

What to practice?

Timing

Opening words (of talk and/or each slide)

How to say unfamiliar words

Run through entire talk (vocally)

If you are new to public speaking, it will really, really show if you don’t practice. Practicing is not the same thing as spending 5 minutes running through your slides. You should recite the talk to learn how long it takes.

Learn to use softwareDo you know how to use Powerpoint/Keynote?

Do you really know to use them?

Can you:

mask/crop an object?

align all objects to an edge

rotate objects by exactly 90º?

animate an object along a custom path?

Knowledge of what your presentation software is capable of can really help you be much more efficient in putting slides together.

Practice, practice, practice!

Practice rehearsing your talk as you will give it

Check every slide, animation, and transition

Get feedback from friends/colleagues

Be prepared to edit and refine slides

Know your talk inside and out

If you don’t practice your talk, then I refuse to be friends with you. Do you know your material so well you could run through your talk without the slides? Can you ad lib on topics related to, but not included in, your main subject matter?

Giving talks for 2nd time

Still need to practice!

Things change (data, background material etc.)!

You’ll have new ideas about your talk

You can always make a talk better

Don’t assume that because you have made a set of slides, that you will never need to change things if you present the same talk again. Audiences differ, your results may have changed, the background material may have changed, and you may have better ideas of how to explain/present your data...all of these things mean that you should always go through every slide and make changes if appropriate.

Summary

Giving a talk is easy

Giving a good talk is hard

Giving a great talk is difficult!

Don’t ever assume it will be easy. Great presentations happen because of great presenters. And presenters become great through hard work and practice.

One great talk could change your career forever...

...so take the time to make every talk fantastic.

If you give a talk at a conference, the audience may contain your future employer or grant/manuscript reviewer! Treat every talk like it is the last talk you’ll ever give.

The End.

# Author: Keith Bradnam, Genome Center, UC Davis# This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

10 tips for adding polish to presentations

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