How to give a technical presentation (how to give a scientific talk)
How to give a technical presentation (how to give a scientific talk)
by Michael Ernst
January, 2005
Last updated: March 21, 2022
Contents:
Introduction
The content
The slides
The presentation
Answering questions
In-class presentations
Practice talks
Other resources
Introduction
(Also see my advice on giving a<br>job talk and on<br>making a technical poster.)
A successful career depends on the ability to give effective<br>technical presentations, whether at a conference, to<br>your research group, or as an invited speaker.<br>This page<br>notes some problems that I very frequently see in talks.
Get feedback by giving multiple practice talks! One<br>of the most effective ways to improve your work is to see the reactions of<br>others and get their ideas and advice.
Think about the presentations you attend (or have attended in the past),<br>especially if they are similar in some way to yours. What was boring about<br>the other presentations? What was interesting about them? What did you<br>take away from the presentation? What could you have told someone about<br>the topic, 30 minutes after the end of the presentation?
The content
Before you start preparing a talk, you need to know your goal and know your<br>audience. You will have to customize your presentation to its purpose.<br>Even if you have previously created a talk for another<br>venue, you often need to make a new one, particularly if the audience<br>differs or you have done more work in the meanwhile.
The goal of a talk you give to your research group is to get feedback to<br>help you improve your research and your understanding of it, so you should<br>plan for a very interactive style, with lots of questions throughout. In a<br>conference talk, questions during the talk are unlikely, and you<br>have much less time; your chief goal is to get people to read the paper or<br>ask questions afterward. In a seminar or invited talk, you<br>want to encourage questions, you have more time, and you should plan to give<br>more of the big picture.
The goal of a talk is similar to the goal of a<br>technical paper: to change the<br>audience's behavior. Therefore, you should also read and follow my advice<br>about writing a technical paper.<br>Decide what the change is, and focus your talk around that.<br>Typically, you have done some<br>research, and to effect the change you need to convince the audience of 3 things: the problem<br>is worthwhile (it is a real problem, and a solution would be<br>useful), the problem is hard (not already solved, and there are<br>not other ways to achieve equally good results), and that you have<br>solved it. If any of these three pieces is missing, your talk is<br>much less likely to be a success. So be sure to provide motivation for<br>your work, provide background about the problem, and supply sufficient<br>technical details and experimental results.
When you give a talk, ask yourself, “What are the key points that my<br>audience should take away from the talk?” Then, elide everything that does<br>not support those points. If you try to say too much (a tempting mistake),<br>then your main points won't strike home and you will have wasted everyone's<br>time. In particular, do not try to include all the details from a<br>technical paper that describes your work; different levels of detail and a<br>different presentation style are appropriate for each. Never paste PDF of<br>a table from a paper to slides. Reformat the table to be more readable and<br>to remove information that is not essential. The talk audience does not<br>have as much time to comprehend the details as a paper reader does.
Before you create slides, a good way to determine what your talk should say<br>is to explain your ideas verbally to someone who does not already<br>understand them. (You may use a blank whiteboard, but that often is not<br>necessary.) You may need to do this a few times before<br>you find the most effective way to present your material.<br>Notice what points you made and in what order, and organize<br>the talk around that. Slides should not be an obstacle that constrains your<br>talk, but they should support the talk you want to give.
Do not try to fit too much material in a talk. About one slide per minute<br>is a good pace (if lots of your slides are animations that take only<br>moments to present, you may have more slides). Remember what your key<br>points are, and focus on those. The key point should be written on the<br>slide, for example as its title or as a callout. Don't present more<br>information than your<br>audience can grasp; for example, often intuitions and an explanation of the<br>approach are more valuable than the gory details of a proof. If you try to<br>fit the entire technical content of a paper into a talk, you will rush<br>and the audience may come away understanding nothing.<br>It's better to think of the talk as an advertisement for the paper that<br>gives the key ideas, intuitions, and results, and that makes the audience<br>eager to read your paper or to talk with you to learn more. That does not<br>mean...