Part 8: Talks and presentations
You'll have to give plenty of talks and presentations during your stay in grad school, and odds are that they're also going to be part of your job description once you've completed your journey on the yellow brick road. Thus it stands to reason that you should strive to become as good as possible within this subject.
From my experience, there are five elements you need to master in order to give an effective talk or presentation:
Public speaking
Getting up in front of a crowd is considered to be intimidating by a large fraction of the population, hence all the jokes on the subject. Like the wedding MC who pulls the time-tested joke about how he (or she) has the most dangerous job in the world, since more than 70% of the population fear public speaking more than death. There is also the Dilbert joke based on the same premise: If you kill someone scheduled to speak in public, then statistically you'd be doing said person a favor.
Whatever. Fact is that to some, public speaking is so intimidating that they get physically ill prior to the event, which obviously is going to affect their performance. This reinforces the bad connotations to public speaking, since it didn't go so well last time, and the downward spiral continues. In which case this is a real problem, and quite frankly something you should consider. If you're going through grad school with the goal of entering academia, for example, then teaching is going to constitute about half of your job description. Teaching means public speaking, so if you get physical symptoms just thinking about standing in front of a crowd, you might want to think about other career paths. Not trying to demoralize anyone, but if half of your job is giving you physical symptoms of stress, then it's not good for you, and I can't see why you would want to expose yourself to that.
If you want to be a good public speaker and get your message across efficiently, you should be comfortable in front of a crowd. Simple (or not) as that. Watching someone who's shaking, sweating, mumbling, avoiding eye contact with the audience like the plague and is trying to will open a bottomless pit below the podium is excruciating. Moreover, if the speaker doesn't even have confidence in him- or herself, then why on earth should I? And why should I trust anything this person presents?
The good news is that for most people, the fear subsides and becomes more manageable with practice. The bad news is that I've never seen anyone go from being terrified of public speaking to loving it.
Scientific content
Unless the scientific basis for what you're presenting is sound, it generally doesn't matter how comfortable you are with public speaking. Sure; you can BS and handwave your way through a talk provided the audience is far below your level of expertise and/or they don't care about the topic. Of these two alternatives, the latter is by far the least desirable. However, there's only so much economy of content you can get away with in front of an audience of your peers. You can't polish a turd. If all you've got to show is a graph depicting the theoretical versus measured number of days since you accepted the invitation to give a talk, you're in for a rough Q&A session. The science is the reason you're giving the talk or presentation, so if it ain't there, you shouldn't be either.
PowerPoint
A few months back, I read a piece wherein some soft-science dude spent a considerable amount of words berating elaborate PowerPoint presentations, boldly stating that "Presentations with fancy graphics and animations were so 90's". If you for a moment think that there's an inverse correlation between the quality of the content and the packaging, you're probably one of the people who show up with a black text-on-white-background, 300 words per slide, default Excel graphics with too small fonts, borefest of a presentation. I've also got a real good deal on some oceanfront property in Nebraska - special price for you, my friend.
A well-designed presentation can only enhance the scientific content and the points you're trying to underscore. That doesn't mean that you can't go overboard, however. When you're thinking about what theme music to incorporate for each segment of slides, you've gone from a talk to a Broadway production. If so, take it down a couple of notches. But don't ever think that the packaging isn't important and that spending the necessary time to make your presentation look good is a waste of time. Learn what you can about design.
Presentation technique
Your presentation consists of more than the content of your slides and the cold hard facts. Meta-talk and how you present the material have tremenduous impact on the total package. Have you ever witnessed a talk where the presenter mumbled, did nothing but read directly off the slides, had his (or her) back to the crowd the entire time and kept uttering "idle - system processing" sounds ("Uhhhhhh", "aaaand.....", "So....like...")? If so, did you come away with an overall impression along the lines of "Damn; that was hands down the best talk I've ever been to. I gotta get me some more of that"?
I didn't think so. In the above example, the presenter displayed the academic equivalent of a radio face, wherein the added dimensions (compared to simply publishing a scientific paper) of a public forum were completely wasted, as the presenter did not use - or benefit from - the added possibilities. A complete waste, like using a symphony orchestra to back up Britney Spears. Timing is key, and the time frame of your talk is not the right moment to go into full introvert mode.
There are many ways to become a good presenter, and I'd recommend taking a course in presentation technique if it's available. One of the ways to make your talk shine is actually by being fluent in and comfortable with the English language. If the presenter before you is some slick dude from an Ivy league institution and your spoken English is reminiscent of Gro Harlem Brundtland or Borat, you'll feel like you're Vanilla Ice and Eminem just opened for you.
You can learn a lot about what works by watching good presenters, and you can "borrow" aspects that you particularly like or find to be effective. However, you should never, ever try to copy someone, no matter how good they are. For one thing, in so doing, your maximum achievement is to become a good clone - hardly alpha material. More importantly, you've got to be yourself - as cliché as that sounds. The style of presentation which is best for you is 100%, grade A, guaran-damn-teed based on your personality. What you should do, is absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own.
Yes; that was an academic quoting Bruce Lee (Tao of Jeet Kune Do) quoting Sun Tzu (The Art of War).
Know Thy Audience
Tailor the level of your talk to the audience as much as possible. If you're talking to high school students, don't be flauntin' the triple integrals and Kramers-Kronig and be all "As you all know from quantum physics 101"-guy. Conversely, you don't need to define "EM radiation" or explain in great detail why the sky is blue at noon if you're giving a talk at the "Dateless Wonders for More Quantum Mechanics and Nonlinear Programming in Physics Education" society's annual optics conference.
You'll have to give plenty of talks and presentations during your stay in grad school, and odds are that they're also going to be part of your job description once you've completed your journey on the yellow brick road. Thus it stands to reason that you should strive to become as good as possible within this subject.
From my experience, there are five elements you need to master in order to give an effective talk or presentation:
Public speaking
Getting up in front of a crowd is considered to be intimidating by a large fraction of the population, hence all the jokes on the subject. Like the wedding MC who pulls the time-tested joke about how he (or she) has the most dangerous job in the world, since more than 70% of the population fear public speaking more than death. There is also the Dilbert joke based on the same premise: If you kill someone scheduled to speak in public, then statistically you'd be doing said person a favor.
Whatever. Fact is that to some, public speaking is so intimidating that they get physically ill prior to the event, which obviously is going to affect their performance. This reinforces the bad connotations to public speaking, since it didn't go so well last time, and the downward spiral continues. In which case this is a real problem, and quite frankly something you should consider. If you're going through grad school with the goal of entering academia, for example, then teaching is going to constitute about half of your job description. Teaching means public speaking, so if you get physical symptoms just thinking about standing in front of a crowd, you might want to think about other career paths. Not trying to demoralize anyone, but if half of your job is giving you physical symptoms of stress, then it's not good for you, and I can't see why you would want to expose yourself to that.
If you want to be a good public speaker and get your message across efficiently, you should be comfortable in front of a crowd. Simple (or not) as that. Watching someone who's shaking, sweating, mumbling, avoiding eye contact with the audience like the plague and is trying to will open a bottomless pit below the podium is excruciating. Moreover, if the speaker doesn't even have confidence in him- or herself, then why on earth should I? And why should I trust anything this person presents?
The good news is that for most people, the fear subsides and becomes more manageable with practice. The bad news is that I've never seen anyone go from being terrified of public speaking to loving it.
Scientific content
Unless the scientific basis for what you're presenting is sound, it generally doesn't matter how comfortable you are with public speaking. Sure; you can BS and handwave your way through a talk provided the audience is far below your level of expertise and/or they don't care about the topic. Of these two alternatives, the latter is by far the least desirable. However, there's only so much economy of content you can get away with in front of an audience of your peers. You can't polish a turd. If all you've got to show is a graph depicting the theoretical versus measured number of days since you accepted the invitation to give a talk, you're in for a rough Q&A session. The science is the reason you're giving the talk or presentation, so if it ain't there, you shouldn't be either.
PowerPoint
A few months back, I read a piece wherein some soft-science dude spent a considerable amount of words berating elaborate PowerPoint presentations, boldly stating that "Presentations with fancy graphics and animations were so 90's". If you for a moment think that there's an inverse correlation between the quality of the content and the packaging, you're probably one of the people who show up with a black text-on-white-background, 300 words per slide, default Excel graphics with too small fonts, borefest of a presentation. I've also got a real good deal on some oceanfront property in Nebraska - special price for you, my friend.
A well-designed presentation can only enhance the scientific content and the points you're trying to underscore. That doesn't mean that you can't go overboard, however. When you're thinking about what theme music to incorporate for each segment of slides, you've gone from a talk to a Broadway production. If so, take it down a couple of notches. But don't ever think that the packaging isn't important and that spending the necessary time to make your presentation look good is a waste of time. Learn what you can about design.
Presentation technique
Your presentation consists of more than the content of your slides and the cold hard facts. Meta-talk and how you present the material have tremenduous impact on the total package. Have you ever witnessed a talk where the presenter mumbled, did nothing but read directly off the slides, had his (or her) back to the crowd the entire time and kept uttering "idle - system processing" sounds ("Uhhhhhh", "aaaand.....", "So....like...")? If so, did you come away with an overall impression along the lines of "Damn; that was hands down the best talk I've ever been to. I gotta get me some more of that"?
I didn't think so. In the above example, the presenter displayed the academic equivalent of a radio face, wherein the added dimensions (compared to simply publishing a scientific paper) of a public forum were completely wasted, as the presenter did not use - or benefit from - the added possibilities. A complete waste, like using a symphony orchestra to back up Britney Spears. Timing is key, and the time frame of your talk is not the right moment to go into full introvert mode.
There are many ways to become a good presenter, and I'd recommend taking a course in presentation technique if it's available. One of the ways to make your talk shine is actually by being fluent in and comfortable with the English language. If the presenter before you is some slick dude from an Ivy league institution and your spoken English is reminiscent of Gro Harlem Brundtland or Borat, you'll feel like you're Vanilla Ice and Eminem just opened for you.
You can learn a lot about what works by watching good presenters, and you can "borrow" aspects that you particularly like or find to be effective. However, you should never, ever try to copy someone, no matter how good they are. For one thing, in so doing, your maximum achievement is to become a good clone - hardly alpha material. More importantly, you've got to be yourself - as cliché as that sounds. The style of presentation which is best for you is 100%, grade A, guaran-damn-teed based on your personality. What you should do, is absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own.
Yes; that was an academic quoting Bruce Lee (Tao of Jeet Kune Do) quoting Sun Tzu (The Art of War).
Know Thy Audience
Tailor the level of your talk to the audience as much as possible. If you're talking to high school students, don't be flauntin' the triple integrals and Kramers-Kronig and be all "As you all know from quantum physics 101"-guy. Conversely, you don't need to define "EM radiation" or explain in great detail why the sky is blue at noon if you're giving a talk at the "Dateless Wonders for More Quantum Mechanics and Nonlinear Programming in Physics Education" society's annual optics conference.
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3 comments:
Great post there. I'll chip in with some cheerleading and a few comments.
You've discussed it several places, but one of my golden rules is: A presentation is oral.
Avoid making your presentation semi-written. As you wrote, it's nothing more boring then hearing a guy standing there reading his slides out loud (send me an e-mail, my reading skills are perfectly fine, thank you). People can't remember a table of 20 numbers they see on a slide for 30 seconds. Extract the main numbers, or (even better) plot them in a graph or similar. Scientific audience can digest (and sometimes demand) formulas and equations, but going overload on equations can make the presentation hard to remember. Equations should support your points, not to show how good you are at maths.
A well-designed presentation can only enhance the scientific content and the points you're trying to underscore.
Yes. Straight to the source there. When I make a slide, I try to focus on "what is my main point here"? And emphasis that point in design, e.g. by using color, size, placement, graphics, bold fonts etc. If there are several points, I'll see if I can spread the one slide over several slides.
However, you should never, ever try to copy someone, no matter how good they are.
Amen!
It really shows when somebody is trying to replicate somebody else. Actually, the better the original is, the worse the copy-cats are.
You've discussed it several places, but one of my golden rules is: A presentation is oral.
Tru dat.
It really shows when somebody is trying to replicate somebody else. Actually, the better the original is, the worse the copy-cats are.
This is true pretty much across the board. .....said the guy who's stolen 75% of his guitar repertoire from YJM
said the guy who's stolen 75% of his guitar repertoire from YJM
Don't worry. Only you, YJM and his three other fans would know...
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