1. Effective Presentations
David Johnson
Fall 2011
Robotics Seminar

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. 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

7. 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!

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. 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

13. 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

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