Presentation Skills

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Presentation Skills

• Michael Weiss
• February 7, 2005

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Sources
Immature poets imitate. Mature poets
steal. T.S.Eliot
"How to Prepare and Make Presentations" by
Christopher Berndt "Conference Presentation
Judo"by Mark-Jason Dominus "How to Give a
Talk"by Bruce Randall Donald "Some Lecturing
Heuristics"by Patrick Winston
links on the course homepage or use Google
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BASICS

• What kind of talk?
• Class presentation?
• 1 hour conference talk?
• 15 minute poster presentation?
• 3 hour tutorial?
• What kind of audience?

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Winstons Wisdom

• The nature of an audience changes with its size.
  With fewer than 20 people, discussion is
  possible. With more than 50, a performance is
  expected, and an audience can turn vicious if it
  does not get one.

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Winstons Wisdom

• Your mood may be determined by only a few
  people. A smiling nodder will make you feel good,
  and you will do better. People reading newspapers
  will make you feel bad, and you will do worse.

Do not permit people to do things that make you
feel bad.
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Check Equipment in Advance
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Practice, practice, practice

• Stage fright is universal
• Memorize the first few minutes
• Give the talk to your friends/pets/stuffed animals

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STRUCTURE

• Menu
• Appetizer
• Entree
• Dessert

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You should have a mental outline of your talk
You dont have to put it on a slide

• BASICS
• STRUCTURE
• Menu
• Appetizer
• Entrée
• Dessert
• SLIDE RULES
• DELIVERY
• QUESTIONS

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The Menu

• Do not begin with a

long
general introduction

• One page of bullet points should do it

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The Appetizer

• Present a carrot immediately and be excited by
  it. Tell the audience what great things they will
  understand from your talk.
• --Patrick Winston

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A Bit of Advice from Presentation Judo
The Entree

• Nonsense!
• Thats boring.
• Instead
• Get to the point as quickly as possible.
• Stay there.
• Don't repeat embellish.

• You have probably heard
• Tell them what you're going to tell them
• then tell them
• then tell them what you told them.

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The Entree according to Winston

• Cycle over the difficult ideas.
• Use examples, analogies, and exceptions This is
  an arch this is not an arch this is almost an
  arch....
• Use verbal punctuation to help people follow your
  argument. Kennedy/Nixon debates Three points
  One ..., two ..., two

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Dessert

• Open questions
• Surprising examples
• But thats really a topic for another talk

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SLIDE RULES

• That is
• How many slides
• Font sizes
• Illustrations
• Etc.

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How many slides? How fast?

• Rule of thumb 1 minute per slide
• Depends on the audience
• And the subject matter

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Use Large Font Sizes

• At least 24 point
• Otherwise they cant read it.
• Bigger is better.
• Boldface is still better.
• Dont use hard-to-read colors.

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Dont Quote Text
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Proofread the slides carefully
15 of your audience is wondering if you should
have used a semi-colon instead of a comma, and
missing all your brilliant ideas.
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Illustrations
If you have line drawings, make the lines two
pixels thick

• One-pixel lines are perfectly legible
• But the thicker lines look better

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Pictures are always good
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Of course, relevant is good too

• Metaphors
• Bright colors
• Diagrams are always helpful

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DELIVERY

• Always face the audience
• Hardly ever block the screen
• Exception
• point to objects on the screen

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Make eye contact with the audience
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Walk around
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QUESTIONS

• When someone in the audience asks a question,
  always repeat it
• Because the rest of the audience didn't hear it
• If you couldn't hear it, ask them politely to
  repeat it more loudly
• If you still can't hear it, invite them to ask
  you after class

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Dessert? Questions?