How to Make a Presentation

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How to Make a Presentation
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Outline

• In this presentation Ill
• Give some suggestions about structure
• Discuss appropriate and inappropriate content
• Point out some dos and donts

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Outline

• In this presentation Ill
• Give some suggestions about structure
• Discuss appropriate and inappropriate content
• Point out some dos and donts

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Structure

• Notice that I began by giving an outline of the
  talk.
• This helps your listeners string together your
  thread of discussion
• I then included a slide pointing out where we
  were currently in the outline.
• This helps listeners follow the talk, or catch
  up if they get lost.

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Structure

• You want to begin your talk by presenting and
  motivating your problem
• Why is is interesting?
• Who will care about your solutions?
• Once youve presented the problem clearly, the
  approach should seem obvious to the listener.
• Above all dont just jump in to the technical
  details!
• Youll lose the whole audience

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Structure

• Once youve presented the problem, you can talk
  about your approach and progress to date.
• Demos or examples are excellent here
• Pictures also help if you have a diagram of your
  system, show it!

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Including Pictures

• Pictures are an excellent way to help make your
  point.
• But a cluttered, hard-to-read picture can be
  worse that no picture.
• Leave out any unnecessary details remember,
  youre interested in getting your main point
  across.

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Including Pictures
blocked
This picture is good (although the colors are not
the best) its simple, Doesnt have a lot of
extraneous information, and will be easy to
integrate into a presentation.
temporal constraints
Note both this picture and the following one are
from actual presentations.
blocked
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Including Pictures
pre at(A,1,3)in at(A,1,3), ?at(B,1,3),
?at(B,0,3), at(A,0,3), ?at(B,0,4), ?at(A,1,3)
post ?at(A,1,3), ?at(B,1,3), ?at(B,0,3),
at(A,0,4), ?at(A,0,3), ?at(B,0,3), ?at(B,0,4)

• This picture is not good.
• Its got way too much going on.
• The audience will be trying to figure out the
  diagrams instead of listening to the talk.

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1,3-0,3
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?at(B,0,3) post at(A,0,3), ?at(A,1,3),
?at(B,1,3), ?at(B,0,3)
pre at(A,0,3)in at(A,0,3), ?at(B,0,3),
?at(B,0,4) post at(A,0,4), ?at(A,0,3),
?at(B,0,3), ?at(B,0,4)
pre at(A,1,3)in at(A,1,3), ?at(B,1,3),
?at(B,0,3), ?at(B,1,4), at(A,0,3), at(A,1,4),
?at(B,0,4), ?at(A,1,3) post ?at(A,1,3),
?at(B,1,3),?at(B,0,3), at(A,0,4), ?at(A,0,3),
?at(A,1,4), ?at(B,0,3),?at(B,1,4), ?at(B,0,4)
0
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Time

• Your talk will be 20-30 minutes long, depending
  on group size.
• This sounds long, but its really quite short!
• A rough estimate is that each slide corresponds
  to about 2 minutes of talking.
• This means that youll want to have 10-15 slides.
• Detailed slides, demos, and diagrams take even
  more time.

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Time

• You should try to plan your talk so that parts
  can be skipped if you run over.
• What if you get stopped by questions, or the demo
  takes longer than you expect?
• Separate your talk into essential and
  optional components
• If youre running long, skip over or move quickly
  over optional slides
• A common error spending too much time on the
  intro and related work.
• You wind up rushing through your results and
  conclusions.
• Audience is left confused.

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Structure

• Every team member is expected to participate
  equally in the presentation.
• This means that youll want to find logical
  separating points.
• For example John will describe our problem and
  approach, and then Mary will tell you about our
  progress and show the demo.

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Outline

• In this presentation Ill
• Give some suggestions about structure
• Discuss appropriate and inappropriate content
• Point out some dos and donts

Notice that Im reminding the audience where we
are in the talk.
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Content

• The goal of your talk is to give your audience an
  idea of what your project is about.
• People are not going to absorb a lot of detail.
• Listeners who want more details will get it from
  conversations afterward, or from your webpage.
• Think of your talk as an advertisement for your
  project
• You want the audience to be interested enough to
  follow up and learn more.
• This means that you have to provide enough
  specifics to interest them, but not so much that
  you confuse or overload them.

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Content

• The most common problem people have is giving too
  much detail without explaining why it is
  important.
• For example, showing a screenful of code to point
  out an elegant solution.
• The audience wont follow this.
• Try to summarize the solution and explain how and
  why it solves the problem.

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Content

• Another common problem Not clearly explaining
  what youre doing and why youre doing it.
• This can lead to lots of confused questions from
  the audience.
• They all want to know why youre not solving
  their pet problem.
• Solution clearly state (and remind them!) what
  your problem is and the assumptions youre making.

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Progress report

• Your talk should contain a section talking about
  what youve done so far and what you plan to do.
• Be realistic.
• Be able to justify why youve chosen to do X
  rather than Y.

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Demos

• Including a demo or a screenshot of your project
  is an excellent idea.
• This can really help the audience understand your
  project.
• Pitfalls Make sure your demo is bulletproof and
  completely ready to go when you start your talk.
• One of the best ways to ruin a talk is to stop in
  the middle for three minutes while you set
  something up or restart a flaky server.
• If your project involves multiple machines or
  network connections, use a canned version for the
  demo.
• Murphys Law The network or server will not
  behave nicely during the talk, no matter how
  often youve tested it.

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Results and Evaluation

• You should include some content describing any
  actual or expected results and
• How you will evaluate these results.
• Are you solving the problem you described at the
  beginning of the talk?
• The form of evaluation will be project-dependent.

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Conclusion

• You want to have a slide that wraps things up
• Remind the audience about the goal of your
  project, point to your web page for further info.
• Give the audience a take-home message
• Whats the one thing you want people to remember
  about your project?
• To avoid Just stopping after the last slide and
  saying I guess Im done.

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Outline

• In this presentation Ill
• Give some suggestions about structure
• Discuss appropriate and inappropriate content
• Point out some dos and donts

Notice that Im reminding the audience where we
are in the talk.
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Things to avoid in making slides

• Dont put your entire talk on the slide.
• The audience will be reading the slide instead of
  listening.
• The slide should serve as an aid to your
  presentation, not a transcript.
• Be concise
• No need for full sentences a short phrase is
  fine.
• (Many of these slides make this mistake)
• Crowded slides are hard to read.

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Things to avoid in making slides

• When including pictures, be sure you check ahead
  of time how they look when projected onto a
  screen.
• They may look fine on your monitor, but terrible
  on an LCD projector.
• Be careful with PowerPoint bells and whistles
  (animations, transitions, etc.)
• A little bit can help, especially if its
  directly related to the presentation (e.g.
  stepping through a flowchart)
• Overuse is very distracting.

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Tips for making slides

• Pick a nice color scheme feel free to use
  PowerPoint templates.
• Black text on a white background looks blah, can
  be hard to read.
• Make sure the text can be read from throughout
  the room.

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Tips on presenting

• Dont write your presentation out and read
  directly from it.
• This leads to a dry monotone that puts people to
  sleep.
• Make eye contact with your audience.
• If youre nervous, find a sympathetic audience
  member and look at them occasionally. (But dont
  fix on them.)
• If looking people in the eye bothers you, try
  looking just above the audiences heads they
  still think youre looking directly at them.
• Be sure to look around the room dont just look
  straight ahead the whole time.

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Tips on Presenting

• Speak slowly and enunciate
• Many people speak quickly when theyre nervous
  be aware of your delivery.
• Be careful with your hands.
• It is very distracting to listen to someone whos
  tapping their fingers, fidgeting, or making
  excessive hand gestures.
• Holding a pointer sometimes helps with this.
• Dont rock back and forth or shuffle around
• Same problem the audience will be watching
  instead of listening.
• Try putting your hands flat on the podium.

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Tips on presenting

• Remember the point of this is to communicate
  your ideas to an audience.
• Think of it as if youre explaining something to
  an audience member.
• Voice be sure to speak loudly
• Dont mumble
• Dont turn and read from your slides on the
  screen no one will be able to hear you.

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Handling Questions

• If someone asks you a tough question, take a
  moment to think before you respond.
• Taking a drink of water is a good way to give
  yourself a few seconds.
• If you dont know the answer, dont bluff.
• Say Ill have to look into that or I dont
  know offhand.
• Be proactive in derailing long or tangential
  questions.
• If someone wants to keep pursuing an obscure
  point, offer to discuss it one-on-one afterward.

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Summary

• The most important element of a good presentation
  is preparation.
• Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
• Practice your talk beforehand you should know
  what you want to say for each slide.
• The slides then serve as a reminder or
  placeholder for you.
• Give a practice version of your talk get
  feedback from your friends.
• Make sure theyre honest get constructive
  criticism.
• This will help you estimate timing and flow and
  anticipate questions or potentially confusing
  areas.

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• Thank you for your attention!
• For further info
• http//www.cs.usfca.edu/brooks
• brooks_at_cs.usfca.edu