Hints for Giving Presentations (A) Anatomy of a Talk PhD Seminar Hints for Giving Presentations (A) Anatomy of a Talk Jeff Offutt http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/

Always Start a Talk With Something the Audience Already Knows A good talk will have Introduction that begins by restating something the audience already knows Presents new material in increasing levels of difficulty Closes by relating each level to the previous level Concludes by relating the entire talk to something the audience knew ahead of time © Jeff Offutt

Generic Outline – 4 Levels Entire Audience Entire Audience Intro Conclusions General Knowledge General Knowledge Context & Overview Results & Discussion Deep Knowledge Deep Knowledge Deep Weeds Specialists © Jeff Offutt

Introduction Introduce characters: Motivate your work What is your problem ? Why is it interesting, important and exciting ? What is its context : How is it different from other research ? Give a teaser for your results — why should we listen to the rest of the talk? Don’t need a full outline, but let audience know enough so they want to listen to the rest Summarize surprising results early © Jeff Offutt

Guts of the Talk Explain what you did Convey one technical nugget Don’t be comprehensive — convey the big picture Use pictures, 1-2 examples, etc. Convey one technical nugget Show one neat concrete thing that came out of your work Analysis Did your work solve the problem ? What are the important broad implications of your work ? © Jeff Offutt

Conclusions Summarize your project with one or two key points If your audience remembers one thing from your talk, you have succeeded Again, this is different from a classroom lecture If they remember two things, you’re doing really well © Jeff Offutt

Some Specific Advice Average 2 minutes per slide Think carefully about the audience and what they know You have to do this before your talk Use pictures Put at most five major bullets on your slides Slides for a classroom lecture usually have a lot more information — they are also used for reference People should be able to read slides quickly — and then listen to you © Jeff Offutt

Can You Do This in 20 Minutes? Advertisers pay $2.5M for 30 seconds during Superbowl – they must be pretty sure they can tell a compelling story in that time A Big Bang episode is 22 minutes long Make your points directly, avoid unnecessary details Organize your presentation Practice! Without an audience In front of your project group members In front of friends not familiar with your project © Jeff Offutt

Next we’ll talk about habits Summary Those are the basics Next we’ll talk about habits during presentations