Effective Presentations David Johnson Fall 2011 Robotics Seminar

Importance of Effective Presenting Presentations are a primary way of selling your ideas to the world Consequences of poor presentations Lower grades Lack of impact on your field Lack of research funding Inability to get desired jobs

Basics of Effective Presentations What message are you trying to communicate? Who is your audience? How do you form your argument? You need not be spell-binding to be effective

Message Is there a problem to solve? Is the problem important? Are you solving it in a new way? What is that new way? Is your new solution better? Do you understand the limitations of your approach? What are the specific new ideas or abilities resulting from your work?

Audience People in your discipline People in your field Tens of thousands People in your field Thousands People in your specialty Hundreds People that may understand the specifics of what you do Tens To whom do you speak?

Audience People in your discipline People in your field Tens of thousands People in your field Thousands People in your specialty Hundreds People that may understand the specifics of what you do Tens To whom do you speak? All of them

Forming Your Argument Different common ways of structuring your argument, but it should include these main elements There is a problem We can solve part of it It is important You need to express these points quickly!

Know What You Want to Say How can you test if you know your message? Try it in different forms You must be able to make an argument in different lengths 1 slide 3 slides 30 slides If you start with 1 slide and are happy, then you can expand from there.

Checking Your Work Reverse engineer your slide deck Fresh eyes Annotate each slide with what it is doing Fresh eyes You start to build a lot of assumptions in your head that may not escape to the slides If the people in your lab get confused, the paper will make zero sense to everyone else in the world

Capture the Reader’s Interest I like a nice figure on the first slide Even if it gives away the results This is not a game show with a prize behind the door, don’t leave your listeners waiting. Don’t make them struggle for your contribution Often people bury it many slides in Or don’t make it clear at all Do explain why it is important Or at least reference other people who think it is. If you don’t know why it is important, stop doing it

Structure of a Slide Makes slides that you can talk about, rather than parrot Pictures of experimental setup Show data, images, math

Tutorial vs. Journal Writing Look at some TED talks for inspiration These are not professional speakers They have a story they want to share Try to let some useful elements creep into your formal writing Make some opinions Create interesting examples Always try to teach and inform rather than just describe

Use of Mathematics Many people try to describe in prose what should be an equation Math is the only way to be unambiguous Makes you feel grownup Math doesn’t have to make it difficult to understand the slides Define terms

Summary Effective presentations have An understood purpose A known audience A crafted message