Giving%20Effective%20Presentations

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Giving Effective Presentations

• Slides by Marie desJardins

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Sources

• Robert L. Peters, Getting What You Came For The
  Smart Students Guide to Earning a Masters or
  Ph.D. (Revised Edition). NY Farrar, Straus, and
  Giroux, 1997.
• Justin Zobel, Writing for Computer Science The
  Art of Effective Communication. Singapore
  Springer-Verlag, 1997.
• Mark D. Hill, Oral presentation advice
• Simon L. Peyton Jones, John Hughes, and John
  Launchbury, How to give a good research talk
• Patrick Winston, Some lecturing heuristics
• Dave Patterson, How to have a bad career in
  research/academia

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Outline

• Rules for presentations
• General guidelines for preparing talks
• Paper presentation guidelines for this class

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Rules for Presentations
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Rule
1

• Know what on earth youre doing up there!
• Rule 2 Know what you want to say
• Rule 3 Know your audience
• Rule 4 Know how long you have

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Rule 2 Know What You Want to Say

• Just giving a project summary is not interesting
  to most people
• You should give enough detail to get your
  interesting ideas across (and to show that
  youve actually solved the problem), but not
  enough to lose your audience
• They want to hear what you did that was cool and
  why they should care
• Preferably, theyll hear the above two points at
  the beginning of the talk, over the course of the
  talk, and at the end of the talk
• If theyre intrigued, theyll ask questions or
  read your paper
• Whatever you do, dont just read your slides!

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Rule 3 Know Your Audience

• Dont waste time on basics if youre talking to
  an audience in your field
• Even for these people, you need to be sure youre
  explaining each new concept clearly
• On the other hand, youll lose people in a
  general audience if you dont give the necessary
  background
• In any case, the most important thing is to
  emphasize what youve done and why they should
  care!

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Rule 4 Know How Long You Have

• How long is the talk? Are questions included?
• A good heuristic is 2-3 minutes per slide
• If you have too many slides, youll skip some
  orworserush desperately to finish. Avoid this
  temptation!!
• Almost by definition, you never have time to say
  everything about your topic, so dont worry about
  skipping some things!
• Unless youre very experienced giving talks, you
  should practice your timing
• A couple of times on your own to get the general
  flow
• At least one dry run to work out the kinks
• A run-through on your own the night before the
  talk

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Comments on Zobel / Peters

• Zobel recommends one minute per slide
• Unless you have VERY little information on each
  slide, this is a racing speed
• Peters recommends writing out your presentation,
  word for word
• This is a very bad idea for most people, and will
  lead to extremely stilted delivery
• The only alternative, if youre not an
  experienced public speaker, is to PRACTICE

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General Presentation Guidelines
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Organizing a Talk

• Talks are linear
• Your audience cant flip back to see what you
  said last
• They cant use the section headers as a guideline
• ? Help them keep track of where you are in the
  talk
• ? Dont try to cover as much ground as you would
  in a technical paper
• Give an overview ( use it throughout)
• Start with a slide or two on key
  ideas/contributions
• Give a high-level summary (or simple example)
  before you dive down into (not too many) details
• Recap at the end

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Slideology 101

• Dont just read your slides!
• Use the minimum amount of text necessary
• Use examples
• Use a readable, simple, yet elegant format
• Use color to emphasize important points, but
  avoid the excessive use of color
• Hiding bullets like this is annoying (but
  sometimes effective), but
• Dont fidget, and
• Dont just read your slides!

Abuse
of
animation
is
a
cardinal
sin!
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How to Give a Bad TalkAdvice from Dave
Patterson, summarized by Mark Hill

1. Thou shalt not be neat
2. Thou shalt not waste space
3. Thou shalt not covet brevity
4. Thou shalt cover thy naked slides
5. Thou shalt not write large
6. Thou shalt not use color
7. Thou shalt not illustrate
8. Thou shalt not make eye contact
9. Thou shalt not skip slides in a long talk
10. Thou shalt not practice

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Handling Questions

• Questions during the talk
• If your presentation will answer the question
  later, say so and move on
• If your presentation wont answer the question,
  either
• Give a brief answer
• Defer the question to the end of the talk
• Make sure you understand the question before
  answering it
• Ask for clarification if you need it
• Restate the question, and ask whether youve
  gotten it right
• Have backup slides for questions you can
  anticipate (but dont have time for in the main
  presentation)

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Paper Summary Presentations
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Goals of Paper Presentations

• Convey why this is an important and/or
  interesting problem
• Review key ideas in the paper
• Convey why this is an important and/or
  interesting approach
• Critique the work
• Stimulate discussion

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Paper Summary Presentations

• Content You should provide a well organized
  presentation of the key contributions and
  important ideas in the paper.
• Timing You should aim for a ten-minute
  presentation.
• This works out to (roughly) four to six slides
  no more!
• As in a real talk, you will get 5-minute,
  2-minute, and times-up warnings from the session
  chair.
• I will cut you off if you go too long!
• Audience Your audience consists of computer
  science graduate students. (I dont count.)
• Some are in your field, some are not
• Most will not have read the paper (at least not
  in depth)
• You cant assume a lot of existing knowledge
• On the other hand, you only have ten minutes! Be
  selective!

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Summary Presentation Content

• Just as when writing a paper on your own work
• Describe the problem
• Starting with a simple example can be very
  helpful
• Explain why its important (or at least why they
  think its important)
• State how the authors solved the problem at an
  appropriate level of detail
• Tell what explicit and implicit claims the
  authors make
• Describe the authors experimental and/or
  analytical evidence for these claims (and
  indicate whether you think the evidence is
  sufficient to support the claims)
• Stimulate discussion by pointing out interesting
  aspects of the approach, flaws,
  limitations/assumptions, open questions, ...

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Giving the Presentation

• PowerPoint slides are fine, but not required
• Draft slides can be sent to me for review, if
  you want feedback beforehand
• Feel free to use the whiteboard, especially to
  work through an example
• Practice your presentation, even if its just to
  yourself, to make sure your timing is correct
• As with written summaries, leave out details that
  you dont have time to explain
• Be prepared to fill in the missing details during
  the discussion session if you are asked questions!

Draft slides must be sent at least 24 hours
before your talk
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Grading and Feedback

• Students are required to fill out a short
  feedback form for each presentation
• You will receive these forms
• I will also give you written feedback
• Your grade will be based on
• Your level of preparation
• The clarity of your presentation
• The timing of your presentation
• Other students evaluation of your presentation
• The ensuing discussion