How to give a talk (that doesn’t put your audience to sleep)

Ramesh RaskarMIT Media Lab

Overview Slide

• I will start with a statement that is too general • Mention terms I haven’t explained yet• I will talk about related work about topic you

don’t know yet• Tell you more about things you have no idea• I will show you results after you have already

lost me• I will conclude with conclusion

Getting Started

• Don’t start with an OVERVIEW slide• Start with a question or motivating example• Give the zeroth order idea in one sentence • Show the ‘magic’

– Conclusion goes first !– Make the audience wonder how you will get there– then on the next 2 slides after magic trick

• Gauge your audience and adapt. If you're not good at gauging, just stick with your original presentation plan.

Curve of Excitement

Time (or Slide #)

Audience Interest

People are excited even before you start because you have a great title/abstract

You have shown the ‘magic’ with a

question or motivating

example

Nitty gritty of the math/algo/implementation. You are

losing some people but its ok.

Cool results

Teaser results, people are

wondering how you got there

‘Whats in it for me’ You give

audience something they

can use with ‘Future Directions’

But there is more. Wait and see how

next year I will show you more

cool stuff. Go see my website.

Curve of Boredome

Time (or Slide #)

Audience Interest

No clue what the title/abstract, jargon words

Your Intended Curve

Real CurvePeople are excited anyway

Start with meaningless ‘Overview’ slide

Describe theory

Describe second order details

Share results which you were trying to keep secret till the end

Discuss future directions

Related work

Too late to share those cool results

We don’t know the context of the theory

Audience is lost because they don’t know ‘why’

The S curve of excitement

• The flipped S-curve of audience excitement vs. time line of your presentation. –

• First few units on the time scale should have content that causes maximum excitement.

• Then audience excitement level goes down as you get into details and explanations. It stays a constant low for the duration of your explanation

• The ending should be 'wow' again. • In essence, the audience is really listening to you only at the

beginning (and bit at the end) unless you engage them in an interactive activity or have a unusual happening in the middle.

Motivation

Motivate the context or application Why is what you are doing important? Why should people care? This could be audience background based

Setting up the problem/approach

• Overview diagram of the project should be at the beginning and not at the end.

Blank slides force people to focus on the speaker. You could also hit 'B' in Microsoft power point to make the screen go blank. ‘B’ again to show your presentation.

If you are digressing from the slide, audience may get confused by what is on your slide. Hit ‘B’.

• Have a photo/figure/sketch on every slide

• The image can be unrelated• If you run out of ideas for a

photo on each slide, just search for the keyword online (here I searched ‘unrelated;)

Last Slide

• Never end with a ‘Thank you’ slide !– This is the slide that will be up for a long time during Q&A– Last slide should be

• Summary of your talk• Website for further info• State problem. State conclusion. Contact info. Nice pictures

– Don’t end with Acknowledgement slide• Appreciated but not useful to most of your audience• Ack slide can be one before ‘Summary’

– How to encourage questions in Q&A• This slides should have take home points and conclusions• State some open questions at the end of the last slide.

Thank you Slide

• Never end with a ‘Thank you’ slide !• Last slide should be – Summary of your talk– website for further info