Guidelines for Preparing Effective Presentations

https://honglangwang.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/guidelines-for-preparing-effective-presentations/

The following is from JSM:

Guidelines for Preparing Effective Presentations

These tips apply regardless of whether the time for the presentations isshort (less than 30 minutes) or long. Complaints about poorpresentations have been received for decades and continue to bereceived. The ASA has offered a short-course on presentation for manyyears, and routinely sends “tips” to speakers to promote effectivepresentations, but often go ignored. The tips and suggestions are hereto help you. Please put them to good use. An ad hoc committee(consisting of A. Lawrence Gould, Chair; Howard Kaplan; Peter ALachenbruch; and Katherine Monti) was formed at the April 1999 ENARbusiness meeting, to address this persistent and pervasive problem.Effective presentations make learning and technical advances morelikely. They also enhance the perception of the presenter in the eyes ofthe professional community. Boring, ineffective presentations are notpaid much attention and often are quickly forgotten, especially byplanners of future invited sessions.

Preparation

Content organization

• Make sure the audience walks away understanding the five things any listener to a presentation really cares about:
  a. What is the problem and why?
  b. What has been done about it?
  c. What is the presenter doing (or has done) about it?
  d. What additional value does the presenter’s approach provide?
  e. Where do we go from here?
• Carefully budget your time, especially for short (e.g., 15 minute)presentations.
• Allow time to describe the problem clearly enough for the audience to appreciate the value of your contribution. This usually will take more than 30 seconds.
• Leave enough time to present your own contribution clearly. This almost never will require all of the allotted time.
• Put your material in a context that the audience can relate to.It’s a good idea to aim your presentation to an audience ofcolleagues who are not familiar with your research area. Yourobjective is to communicate an appreciation of the importanceof your work, not just to lay the results out.
• Give references and a way to contact you so those interested in the theoretical details can follow up.

Preparing effective displays

Here are some suggestions that will make your displays more effective.

• Keep it simple. The fact that you can include all kinds of cute decorations, artistic effects, and logos does not mean that you should. Fancy designs or color shifts can make the important material hard to read. Less is more.
• Use at least a 24-point font so everyone in the room can readyour material. Unreadable material is worse than useless – itinspires a negative attitude by the audience to your work and,ultimately, to you. NEVER use a photocopy of a standard printedpage as a display – it is difficult to overstate how annoying thisis to an audience.
• Try to limit the material to eight lines per slide, and keep the number of words to a minimum. Summarize the main points – don’t include every detail of what you plan to say. Keep it simple.
• Limit the tables to four rows/columns for readability. Sacrificecontent for legibility – unreadable content is worse than useless.Many large tables can be displayed more effectively as a graphthan as a table.
• Don’t put a lot of curves on a graphical display – busy graphical displays are hard to read. Also, label your graphs clearly with BIG, READABLE TYPE.
• Use easily read fonts. Simple fonts like Sans Serif and Arial are easier to read than fancier ones like Times Roman or Monotype Corsiva. Don’t use italic fonts.
• Light letters (yellow or white) on a dark background (e.g., darkblue) often will be easier to read when the material is displayedon LCD projectors.
• Use equations sparingly if at all – audience members not working in the research area can find them difficult to follow as part of a rapidly delivered presentation. Avoid derivations and concentrate on presenting what your results mean. The audience will concede the proof and those who really are interested can follow up with you, which they’re more likely to do if they understand your results.
• Don’t fill up the slide – the peripheral material may not make itonto the display screen – especially the material on the bottomof a portrait-oriented transparency.
• Identify the journal when you give references: Smith, Bcs96 clues the reader that the article is in a 1996 issue of Biometrics, and is much more useful than just Smith 1996.
• Finally, and this is critical, always, always, always preview your presentation. You will look foolish if symbols and Greek letters that looked OK in a WORD document didn’t translate into anything readable in POWERPOINT – and it happens!

Timing your talk

Don’t deliver a 30-minute talk in 15 minutes. Nothing irritates anaudience more than a rushed presentation. Your objective is to engagethe audience and have them understand your message. Don’t floodthem with more than they can absorb. Think in terms of what it wouldtake if you were giving (or, better, listening to) the last paper in the lastcontributed paper session of the last day. This means:

• Present only as much material as can reasonably fit into the time period allotted. Generally that means 1 slide per minute, or less.
• Talk at a pace that everybody in the audience can understand. Speak slowly, clearly, and loudly, especially if your English is heavily accented
• PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Ask a colleague to judge your presentation, delivery, clarity of language, and use of time.
• Balance the amount of material you present with a reasonable pace of presentation. If you feel rushed when you practice, then you have too much material. Budget your time to take a minute or two less than your maximum allotment. Again, less is more.

Loose ends

• PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE the presentation, with care to content, delivery and use of time. (In case you missed this recommendation above)

The Presentation

• Put on the microphone and be sure that it works before you begin.
• Be sure everyone in the room can see your material. Make sure you do not block the screen. Move around if you must so that everyone has a chance to see everything.
• Never apologize for your displays. More to the point, makeapologies unnecessary by doing the material properly in the firstplace (see the recommendations above). Do not say, “I knowyou can’t see this, but…” The reaction of many people in theaudience will be “why bother showing it, then?” (Or, evenworse, “Why didn’t you take the trouble to make themlegible?”)
• Don’t apologize for incomplete results. Researchers understand that all research continues. Just present the results and let the audience judge. It is okay to say, “work is on-going”. Do not say, “I’m sorry that work is not done.” This invites the audience to tune out or wonder why you are talking at all.

When Finished

• Thank the audience for their attention
• Gather you materials and move off quickly to allow the nextpresenter to prepare
• Stay for the entire session

The following is from the post:

1. When giving an invited talk at a general TCS conference, do not assume that everyone in the audience isinterested in the technicalities of your subject. Focus onthe main message, tell the story of the ideas and whyyou think they are important. Give everyone somethingto take home.
2. Do not assume that you do not need to introduce thesetting for your work because someone else has done itbefore or on an earlier conference day. Not everyone willhave attended the talks where the background andmotivation were presented.
3. Do not run over time.
4. Never speak with your hands on your mouth, even if it feels good 
5. Do not let your voice drop to an inaudible level as your sentence progresses. Dare to speak slowly and loudly.
6. Ask yourself: How many slides do I really need for a 20-minute talk? Most of us will only use a few, and those should convey the message of the talk at a suitable level of abstraction.

The advice we give others is the advice we ourselves need.