Comments on: Giving good talks (my Top Ten Suggestions)

By: Janice

Janice — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:49:33 +0000

Great points!
Some of the best presentations I’ve attended always have some personal stories or experiences related to the topic woven through them.
Almost always, the worst presentations involved the presenter narrating the contents of a PowerPoint deck (bullet by excruciating bullet!)
When I’ve given presentations, I always find it easier if I am able to arrive ahead of time and chat with a few audience members on a break — helps reduce any nervousness I might have, and probe a little bit to see what people’s expectations are

By: What’s Up Wednesdays: Proximidade Awards « Beyond the Rhetoric

What’s Up Wednesdays: Proximidade Awards « Beyond the Rhetoric — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:03:07 +0000

[...] Hummingbird604, who teaches us how to give good talks [...]

By: fotoeins

fotoeins — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:12:09 +0000

How’s this for timing …

BBC News | UK | Magazine | The problem with PowerPoint
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8207849.stm

By: Raul

Raul — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:06:30 +0000

Hey Vince

Thanks! I appreciate all feedback and link love and promptly shall be returned too!

By: Vince

Vince — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:38:22 +0000

Hey Raul, this is an excellent top ten list. I thought you have some great insight and advice, I am always trying to improve my public speaking. I think that speaking and interacting instead of reading is so important to engaging the audience and presenting an effective talk. I found you through Twitter and am now following you, we are @toptentopten. You can cross-post this to our site http://www.toptentopten.com/ and link back to your site. We are trying to create a directory for top ten lists where people can find your site. The coolest feature is you can let other people vote on the rankings of your list.

By: Raul

Raul — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:24:39 +0000

@ Jon and @ Henry – thanks a lot for the suggestions!

@ Garth – I have only one, but I meant – I have done lots of presentations, of which one was my doctoral defence (ooops I hate it when my writing doesn’t convey my thoughts well!)

@ Vincent – glad the tips have been useful. When I’ve taught at the university level I’ve always tried to implement these tips.

Best,
Raul

By: Vincent Ng

Vincent Ng — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:00:14 +0000

I agree with many of your tips. I think what happens is that people forget that educational presentations need to be engaging to the people we listen too. I think what happens a lot in academic circles is that we’re often presented information in a way that our brain doesn’t enjoy. And even though there are some fascinating discoveries, many people make them sound incredibly boring. I still remember lectures back at UBC, and how no one seemed to be interested in WHAT they were actually saying. They only listened to get a passing grade. Thanks for the great tips! I’ve retweet the post.

By: Garth

Garth — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:58:32 +0000

“…some of these included defending a doctoral thesis”

How many doctorates do you have, Raul?

By: Jon Jennings

Jon Jennings — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:04:27 +0000

All good points!

I’m especially fond of the “don’t read your Powerpoint slides” one. I see so many people using Powerpoint as an alternative to actually memorizing their speech… just treating it as electronic notes. Except it doesn’t work because the audience reads ahead of you and then you’re just boring them. If you’re really going to force your audience to go through the slide word-by-word then it’s probably less condescending to simply give them 20 seconds of silence to do that – but then you’ve lost their attention. My preferred method is to flick to the slide, flick my glance at the screen to check it’s there and then totally ignore it.

Oh – and if you’re using OpenOffice beware that its transitions are not compatible with Powerpoint. I wrote a presentation in OpenOffice last year but had to give it on a machine which only had Powerpoint installed. I’d put a lot of work into some of the slides to reveal my points one by one and mesh well with my speech… Powerpoint just goes *blam* and shows the entire slide in one go! (Although that was OO 2.4 – maybe 3.0 is better)

The intro/body/conclusion thing is very important. I’d also comment on limiting the number of points in your body and making clear transitions between them so that your audience knows where they are in your talk and where they’re going.

I’m a BIG fan of introductions… if you don’t engage your audience in the first 15 seconds then you’ve lost them for the entire talk. I like to start with a question or a surprising statistic.

The conclusion is also key. A lot of people ad-lib their conclusions – they say everything they want to say and then they just wrap it all up with whatever words come to mind at the time. But the conclusion is very powerful because it reinforces everything that’s gone before and wraps it up in a neat couple of soundbites for the audience to take away with them. It’s definitely worth writing out your conclusion beforehand and memorizing it word-for-word.

The ‘rule of three’ is sometimes applied to the intro/body/conclusion structure but more frequently means something else – listen to professional speakers and you’ll often hear them list items in threes. See some examples here: http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/rule-of-three-836.htm – it’s a very powerful technique.

Two of my other favorite techniques are vocal variety and body language. There’s a time in your speech to be loud and a time to be quiet, a time to talk fast and a time to talk slowly (and, equally importantly, a time to pause altogether). The key is mastering when to use all these facets of your voice to reinforce your content and to keep your audience interested. Body language is very interesting… if your body language is good then your audience probably won’t notice it, but if it’s bad it’ll detract awfully from your words until your audience are focusing solely on your pacing, your hand-clasping or the way you keep scratching your ear.

By: fotoeins

fotoeins — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:47:16 +0000

* Practice your talk at least twice : the first will always be rough as you get the timing down, and you discover what information is missing and what slides to toss; the second test will be better. If a third test is in order, you’re likely going to nail your talk. If you’re going into the room “cold”, you probably know your content through and through; if not, you’ll be in trouble with a capital-T.

* Where #5 above is concerned, I’ve witnessed too many talks where the speaker’s body is turned partly or completely *away* from the audience and to the screen. That is all sorts of badness. If I know my talk well enough, I’ll be facing the audience, looking at all parts of the room at different times, and I’ll turn away from the audience only for slide-transitions and to ensure I know about what slide is discussed. This is not obvious to everyone, even in our line of work.

* Do not block the screen. If the venue is small and/or “low,” there are going to be folks sitting at the front or sitting off to the very side of the auditorium. Try and figure out where the next place to ‘stand’ which, if possible, gives everyone in the room an unobstructed view of the screen. This point is important for those of us who go to meetings, conferences, symposia, workshops where it is not standard practice to distribute handouts to talks.