1. Some pointers to an effective technical talk Krishna Jagannathan September 4, 2015

2. The Challenge A technical talk is an opportunity to impress your audience and to get them excited about your work It is not an exercise in information transfer

3. No one cares about your work Your primary objective should be to catch the attention of a typical, indifferent listener At a high level, focus on conveying the following 1.What have you done? 2.Why is it important? Why should your listeners care? 3.What was the key challenge/difficulty? How did you overcome? 4.What is the take-home message? One key intuition to remember?

4. Three stages Tell them what you will tell them o Positioning and motivation Then, tell them o Main contributions o Challenges encountered and overcome Finally, tell them what you told them o Recap and summarize the main contributions and significance o Take home message, key intuition, lessons learnt…

5. Three things that matter Slides Soundtrack Delivery

6. Slides are just props Visual Anchor to the Soundtrack Sparse slides, no complete sentences o Roughly 12-15 slides for a 20 minute talk o ‘Outline’ slide is overrated! Be as visual as possible o Block diagrams, toy models.. o If something can be explained with a picture, do it! Equations: only keep the most essential ones o Never go over long derivations or proofs – you’ll lose your audience

7. Bullet points are boring Bullets may be useful in listing advantages, disadvantages etc. It would be silly use bullets to describe a system model, for example – draw a picture! Bad examples: (this slide is one!) N sensor nodes on a plane Rayleigh fading channel between them Nodes interfere within a radius R Moral: Bullets have their uses, but don’t make your entire talk with them!!

8. Slide title should summarize the slide Bad examples: Conclusions Properties of FFT Convergence rate analysis Instead consider XYZ algorithm is optimal, efficient FFT efficiently implementable, scalable Policy XYZ converges exponentially fast

9. Slides: miscellanies Use legible backgrounds and font colours o PowerPoint theme colours and fonts are usually okay o Beware of using random colours on ppt or beamer Choose a legible font, maintain font consistency o Sans Serif fonts render better on projectors, esp at lower resolutions o Times has Serifs o Avoid illegible, highly stylized, or flippant fonts Caption all figures, label axes, readable font size

10. Soundtrack Practice, practice and practice Practice again Be pithy, technically precise Speak slowly o We Indians speak too fast – perhaps we confuse speed for fluency!

11. Delivery and Body Language Face the audience, don’t look at the slides while speaking Don’t fidget around; No self-touching gestures o These habits immediately give away a sense of insecurity/tension Maintain eye contact with individuals in the audience, gradually shifting your gaze Emphasize important intuition, results with appropriate pauses/flourishes

12. Oh, did I mention Excitement? Energy and Excitement A great talk – you know it when you hear one You know it when you give one!!