Tips for Giving Really Good Presentations
Dear Alice,
Today I would like to present you with a list of useful tips to consider when giving a presentation or a talk. Whether it is an academic talk, a scientific talk, or a public talk, telling a good story when you want to convey an idea to your audience is very important. I might say it is as important as the content of the talk itself.
So how did I come up with this idea for our main discussion today? Well, that is a very good question that I am very happy to answer. It all started last week in Graz, when I had the chance to attend a very good talk as part of the “Nikola Tesla Lectures on Innovation” Series, which is a recurring event at the Graz University of Technology. This time the talk was on the “Internet of Things and the Digital Revolution”. Yes, you are right: “A promising and intriguing subject”, I was looking forward to hear about! If you are familiar with German, here is a link containing more information about the event: Nikola Tesla Lectures on Innovation: Das Internet der Dinge.
The talk itself was very good I would say, and this depended very much on the speaker. I must say that I attended a large number of talks in my career by now, starting with dissertations and ending with scientific talks at well known international conferences in the area of symbolic and numeric computation, mathematical logic or computer algebra. And I will be honest and tell you that some of these talks were good, some were really good, and some were not as good as expected. So when I see and hear a good speaker, I definitely can identify him/her. Good story telling makes the difference!
A good speaker can present any subject with enthusiasm and passion; he can raise the interest of the participants in the subject and its unexplored territories; he can determine the participants from the audience to pursuit the subject on their own. And that is exactly what any interested participant would expect from a talk!
So which are the secret ingredients of a good presentation? Here are some tips I came up with while attending and giving several scientific talks myself.
- Use humor as part of the talk. This will create an informal bond between you and the audience and thus will increase the number of participants paying attention to your talk. Losing your audience is very easy at any talk, so the right joke at the right time can bring back on track your audience. But kept it simple and professional, remember you are not there to make them laugh, but to make them occasionally smile.
- Take enough time to come up with a logical structure for your presentation. This is very important! Unfortunately I attended talks, where I was wondering myself if the information that is presented to me is still part of the same talk. Be concise and precise and indicate the connection between the different parts of your talk. Remember: the pieces of your talk are exactly like the pieces of puzzle that have to fit all together.
- Basic structure should at least cover answers to the 3 main questions: “Why?, What?, How?”. The most basic structure should have the following parts: introduction: where you are always explaining your title, you are giving the motivation, and you are presenting the state of the art in the respective domain; content: where you are presenting the problem; results: where you are presenting the solution and conclusion: where you include a summary and give the audience the chance to ask questions.
- Keep things technical but do not overload your explanations. Making things complicated such as displaying complicated mathematical formulas, unexplained terms or long exhausting proofs or physical phenomena will not help in making your point. Trust me! The details must be as simple as possible, and as complex as necessary.
- Always explains all the terms on your slides. Do not include terms or shortenings on your slides, that are not explained. The people came to your talk to find a certain degree of answers. So give them what they came for.
- Include indicators in the talk, such as page number for the slides. Also it is good practice to frequently indicate the overview of your talk and at which point is your talk currently advancing after finishing each section and starting a new one.
- Use visuals. These include images and/or videos to communicate the main idea. Drawings and diagrams to express the details of the idea. Tables and statistics to present the results and the conclusions.
- End with a slide containing a “thank you” note for the audience attending your talk. This will bring a feeling of recognition to your audience. And they will definitely leave the room, not only thinking about the subject, but also appreciating you for taking the time to delight them with such a great subject.
- Practice, practice and more practice. Yes, practice makes perfect and repetition is the mother of all learning. So if your are given a chance to give a talk (in either stage of your profession or your personal development), take it! It is a chance to improve yourself and your story telling skills.
So here is hoping for more improvement to come for all of us giving talks of any kind, and here is thanking to Professor Friedemann MATTERN for giving such an inspiring talk at the Graz University of Technology!
Sincerely yours,
madalina