Giving a technical presentation (giving a talk)

by Michael Ernst
January, 2005
Last updated: August 22, 2011
Contents:
Introduction
The content
The slides
The presentation
o Answering questions
In-class presentations
Practice talks
Other resources
Introduction
(Also see my advice on giving a job talk and on making a technical poster.)
There are many good references regarding how to give an effective talk that is, a
technical presentation, whether at a conference, to your research group, or as an
invited speaker at another university or research laboratory. This page cannot replace
them, but it does briefly note a few problems that I very frequently see in talks.
Get feedback by giving a practice talk! One of the most effective ways to improve
your work is to see the reactions of others and get their ideas and advice.
Think about the presentations you attend (or have attended in the past), especially if
they are similar in some way to yours. What was boring about the other presentations?
What was interesting about them? What did you take away from the presentation?
What could you have told someone about 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
audience. You will have to customize your presentation to its purpose. This also
means that even if you have previously created a talk for another venue, you may have
to make a new one. This is especially true if you have done more work in the
meanwhile, but is often the case even if not.
The goal of a talk you give to your research group is to get feedback to help you
improve your research and your understanding of it, so you should plan for a very
interactive style, with lots of questions throughout. In a conference talk, questions
during the talk are extremely unlikely, and you have much less time; your chief goal is
to get people to read the paper or ask questions afterward. In an invited talk at a
university, you again want to encourage questions, you have more time, and should
plan to give more of the big picture.
The goal of a talk is similar to the goal of a technical paper, so you should also read
and follow my advice about writing a technical paper. In either case, you have done
some research, and you need to convince the audience of 3 things: the problem
is worthwhile (it is a real problem, and a solution would be useful), the problem it
is hard (not already solved, and there are not other ways to achieve equally good
results), and that you have solved it. If any of these three pieces is missing, your talk
is much less likely to be a success. So be sure to provide motivation for your work,
provide background about the problem, and supply sufficient technical details and
experimental results.
When you give a talk, ask yourself, What are the key points that my audience should
take away from the talk? Then, elide everything that does not support those points. If
you try to say too much (a tempting mistake), then your main points won't strike home
and you will have wasted everyone's time. In particular, do not try to include all the
details from a technical paper that describes your work; different levels of detail and a
different presentation style are appropriate for each.
A good way to determine what your talk should say is to explain your ideas verbally
to someone who does not already understand them. Do this before you have tried to
create slides (you may use a blank whiteboard, but that often is not necessary). You
may need to do this a few times before you find the most effective way to present
your material. Notice what points you made and in what order, and organize the talk
around that. Slides should not be a crutch that constrains you 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 is a good pace
(if lots of your slides are animations that take only moments to present, you can have
more slides). Remember what your key points are, and focus on those. Don't present
more information than your audience can grasp; for example, often intuitions and an
explanation of the approach are more valuable than the gory details of a proof. If you
try to fit the entire technical content of a paper into a talk, you will rush, with the
result that the audience may come away understanding nothing. It's better to think of
the talk as an advertisement for the paper that gives the key ideas, intuitions, and
results, and that makes the audience eager to read your paper or to talk with you to
learn more. That does not mean holding back important details merely omitting
less important ones. You may also find yourself omitting entire portions of the
research that do not directly contribute to the main point you are trying to make in
your talk.
Just as there should be no extra slides, there should be no missing slides. As a rule,
you shouldn't speak for more than a minute or so without having new information
appear. If you have an important point to make, then have a slide to support it. (Very
few people can mesmerize an audience on a technical topic, and leave the audience
with a deep understanding of the key points, without any support. Unfortunately, you
are probably not one of them, at least not yet.) As a particularly egregious example, do
not discuss a user interface without presenting a picture of it perhaps multiple ones.
As another example, you should not dwell on the title slide for very long, but should
present a picture or text relevant to the problem you are solving, to make the
motivation for your work concrete.
The slides
Slide titles. Use descriptive slide titles. Do not use the same title on multiple slides
(except perhaps when the slides constitute an animation or build). Choose a
descriptive title that helps the audience to appreciate what the specific contribution of
this slide is. If you can't figure that out, it suggests that you have not done a good job
of understanding and organizing your own material.
Introduction. Start your talk with motivation and examples and have lots of
motivation and examples throughout. For the very beginning of your talk, you need to
convince the audience that this talk is worth paying attention to: it is solving an
important and comprehensible problem. Your first slide should be an example of the
problem you are solving, or some other motivation.
Outline slides. Never start your talk with an outline slide. (That's boring, and it's too
early for the audience to understand the talk structure yet.) Outline slides can be
useful, especially in a talk that runs longer than 30 minutes, because they helps the
audience to regain its bearings and to keep in mind your argument structure. Present
an outline slide (with the current current section indicated via color, font, and/or an
arrow) at the beginning of each major section of the talk, other than the introductory,
motivational section.
Conclusion. The last slide should be a contributions or conclusions slide, reminding
the audience of the take-home message of the talk. Do not end the talk with future
work, or with a slide that says questions or thank you or the end or merely
gives your email address. And, leave your contributions slide up after you finish the
talk (while you are answering questions). One way to think about this rule is: What do
you want to be the last thing that the audience sees (or that it sees while you field
questions)?
Builds. When a subsequent slide adds material to a previous one (or in some other
way just slightly changes the previous slide; this is sometimes called a build), all
common elements must remain in exactly the same position. A good way to check this
is to quickly transition back and forth between the two slides several times. If you see
any jitter, then correct the slide layout to remove it. You may need to leave extra
space on an early slide to accommodate text or figures to be inserted later; even
though that space may look a little unnatural, it is better than the alternative. If there is
any jitter, the audience will know that something is different, but will be uneasy about
exactly what has changed (the human eye is good at detecting the change but only
good at localizing changes when those changes are small and the changes are smooth).
You want the audience to have confidence that most parts of the slide have not
changed, and the only effective way to do that is not to change those parts whatsoever.
You should also consider emphasizing (say, with color or highlighting) what has been
added on each slide.
Keep slides uncluttered. Don't put too much text (or other material) on a slide. When
a new slide goes up, the audience will turn its attention to comprehending that slide. If
the audience has to read a lot of text, they will tune you out, probably missing
something important. This is one reason the diagrams must be simple and clear, and
the text must be telegraphic. As a rule of thumb, 3 lines of text for a bullet point is
always too much, and 2 full lines is usually too much. Shorten the text, or break it into
pieces (say, subbullet points) so that the audience can skim it without having to ignore
you for too long.
Do not read your slides word-for-word. Reading your slides verbatim is very boring
and will cause the audience to tune out. You are also guaranteed to go too fast for
some audience members and too slow for others, compared to their natural reading
speed, thus irritating many people. If you find yourself reading your slides, then there
is probably too much text on your slides. The slides should be an outline, not a
transcript. That is, your slides should give just the main points, and you can supply
more detail verbally. It's fine to use the slides as a crutch to help you remember all the
main points and the order in which you want to present them. However, if you need
prompting to remember the extra details, then you do not have sufficient command of
your material and need to practice your talk more before giving it publicly.
Just as you should not read text verbatim, you should not read diagrams verbatim.
When discussing the architecture of a system, don't just read the names of the
components or give low-level details about the interfaces between them. Rather,
explain whatever is important, interesting, or novel about your decomposition; or
discuss how the parts work together to achieve some goal that clients of the system
care about; or use other techniques to give high-level understanding of the system
rather than merely presenting a mass of low-level details.
(It's possible to overdo the practice of limiting what information appears on each
slide, and you do want to have enough material to support you if there are questions or
to show that the simplified model you presented verbally is an accurate generalization.
But the mistake of including too much information is far more common.)
Text. Keep fonts large and easy to read from the back of the room. If something isn't
important enough for your audience to be able to read, then it probably does not
belong on your slides.
Use a sans-serif font for your slides. (Serifed fonts are best for reading on paper, but
sans-serif fonts are easier to read on a screen.) PowerPoint's Courier New font is
very light (its strokes are very thin). If you use it, always make it bold, then use color
or underlining for emphasis where necessary.
Figures. Make effective use of figures. Avoid a presentation that is just text. Such a
presentation misses important opportunities to convey information. It is also is
wearying to the audience.
Images and visualizations are extremely helpful to your audience. Include diagrams to
show how your system works or is put together. Never include generic images, such
as clip art, that don't relate directly to your talk. For example, if you have a slide about
security, don't use the image of a padlock. As another example, when describing the
problem your work solves, don't use an image of a person sitting at a computer
looking frustrated. Just as good pictures and text are better than text alone, text alone
is better than text plus bad pictures.
When you include a diagram on a slide, ensure that its background is the same color
as that of the slide. For example, if your slides have a black background, then do not
paste in a diagram with a white background, which is visually distracting, hard to
read, and unattractive. You should invert the diagram so it matches the slide (which
may require redrawing the diagram), or invert the slide background (e.g., use a white
slide background) to match the diagrams.
Do not use eye candy such as transition effects, design elements that appear on every
slide, or multi-color backgrounds. At best, you will distract the audience from the
technical material that you are presenting. At worst, you will alienate the audience by
giving them the impression that you are more interested in graphical glitz than in
content. Your slides can be attractive and compelling without being fancy. Make sure
that each element on the slides contributes to your message; if it does not, then
remove it.
Color. About 5% of American males are color-blind, so augment color with other
emphasis where possible.
The presentation
Make eye contact with the audience. This draws them in and lets you know whether
you are going too fast, too slow, or just right. Do not face the screen, which puts your
back to the audience. This is offputting, prevents you from getting feedback from the
audience's body language, and can cause difficulty in hearing/understanding you. Do
not look down at your computer, either, which shares many of the same problems.
Don't stand in front of the screen. This prevents the audience from viewing your
slides.
Being animated is good, but do not pace. Pacing is very distracting, and it gives the
impression that you are unprofessional or nervous.
When giving a presentation, never point at your laptop screen, which the audience
cannot see. Amazingly, I have seen many people do this! Using a laser pointer is fine,
but the laser pointer tends to shake, especially if you are nervous, and can be
distracting. I prefer to use my hand, because the talk is more dynamic if I stride to the
screen and use my whole arm; the pointing is also harder for the audience to miss.
You must touch the screen physically, or come within an inch of it. If you do not
touch the screen, most people will just look at the shadow of your finger, which will
not be the part of the slide that you are trying to indicate.
If you find yourself suffering a nervous tic, such as saying um in the middle of
every sentence, then practice more, including in front of audiences whom you do not
know well.
If you get flustered, don't panic. One approach is to stop and regroup; taking a drink
of water is a good way to cover this, so you should have water on hand even if you
don't suffer from dry throat. Another approach is to just skip over that material; the
audience is unlikely to know that you skipped something.
Think about your goal in giving the talk. When presenting to your own research
group, be sure to leave lots of time for discussion and feedback at the end, and to
present the material in a way that invites interaction after and perhaps during the talk.
(When presenting to your own group, you can perhaps give a bit less introductory
material, though it's hard to go wrong with intro material. It should go quickly for that
audience, and it's always good to practice giving the motivation, context, background,
and big ideas.)
For computer science conferences, the typical dress code is business casual. (For
men, this is a dress shirt with slacks.) Some people dress more formally, some more
casually. The most important thing is that you are comfortable with your clothing; if
you are not, your discomfort will lead to a worse presentation.
Answering questions
Answering questions from the audience is very hard! Even after you become very
proficient at giving a talk, it will probably take you quite a bit longer to become good
at answering questions. So, don't feel bad if that part does not go perfectly, but do
work on improving it.
Just as you practice your talk, practice answering questions both the ones that you
can predict, and also unpredictable ones. Giving practice talks to people who are
willing to ask such questions can be very helpful.
When an audience member asks a question, it is a good idea to repeat the question,
asking the questioner whether you have understood it, before answering the question.
This has three benefits.
You ensure that you have understood the question. When thinking under
pressure, it can be far too easy to jump to conclusions, and it is bad to answer a
question different than the one that was asked. A related benefit is that you get
to frame the question in your own words or from your own viewpoint.
You give yourself a few moments to think about your answer.
If the audience member does not have a microphone, the rest of the audience
may not have been able to hear the question clearly.
Be willing to answer a question with no or I don't know. You will get into more
trouble if you try to blather on or to make up an answer on the fly.
In-class presentations
For an in-class presentation, you will be judged on how well other people understand
the material at the end of the class, not on how well you understand the material at the
beginning of the class. (You do need to understand the material, but that is not the
main point.)
When you present a paper in class, you should cover not only the technical details
(people generally do a good job of this), but also what is novel and why others didn't
do it before. That is just as important but very often overlooked. Focus on what is
important about the paper, not just on what is easy to explain or to give an example
for.
Know what your main point is, and don't get bogged down in easier-to-understand but
less interesting details. Try not to bring up a topic until you are ready to discuss it in
detail don't bring it up multiple times.
Encourage questions it's the best way to deepen understanding and be able to
answer them. If other students wrote questions in a reading summary, be responsive to
them. When you ask a question, don't assume the answer in the form of your question.
For example, don't ask, Was there anything novel in the paper, or not? but What
was novel in the paper? It can be very effective to ask a question that reveals
understanding of a subtle or easy-to-misunderstand point (but an important one!) in
the paper, because this will lead the audience members to reflect both on the paper
and on the way they read and understood it.
Augment your talking with visuals on the board or slides. Either is fine. The board
may encourage more interaction (and it slows you down in a beneficial way), but does
require pre-planning; don't just go up and start drawing. Most people find comfort in
having pre-prepared slides, and slides can be a good choice because they can be more
legible and detailed, can include animations, etc. Don't waste a huge amount of time
on elaborate slide decks, though; that is not the point. Examples are often very
helpful.
Practice talks
(Also see Tessa Lau's advice on giving a practice talk which focuses on a practice
talk for a PhD qualifying exam, but is relevant to talks in general.)
Always give a practice talk before you present in front of an audience. Even if you
have read over your slides and think you know how the talk will go, when you speak
out loud your ideas are likely to come out in a different or less clear way. (This is true
about writing, too: even if you know what you want to say, it takes several revisions
to figure out the best way to say it.) In fact, you should practice the talk to yourself
speaking out loud in front of a mirror, for example before you give your first
practice talk. In such a practice session, you must say every word you intend to in the
actual talk, not skipping over any parts.
It can be a good idea to keep your practice talk audience relatively small certainly
fewer than 10 people. In a large group, many people won't bother to speak up. If the
pool of potential attendees is larger than 10, you can give multiple practice talks, since
the best feedback is given by someone who has not seen the talk (or even the material)
before. Giving multiple practice talks is essential for high-profile talks such as
conference talks and interview talks. However, the group shouldn't be too small,
because otherwise you might be convinced to change the entire structure of your talk
by one person who has a different view; getting a balance of opinions will help you
avoid making too many mistakes in any one direction.
Consider videotaping yourself to see how you come across to others. This information
can be a bit traumatic, but it is invaluable in helping you to improve.
When giving a practice talk, number your slides (say, in the corner), even if you don't
intend to include slide numbers in your final presentation.
When giving a practice talk, it is very helpful to distribute hardcopy slides (remember
to include slide numbers) so that others can easily annotate them and return them to
you at the end of the talk. (Also, the audience will spend less time trying to describe
what slide their comment applies to, and more time writing the comment and paying
attention to you.) For non-practice talks, you generally shouldn't give out hardcopy
slides, as they will tempt the audience to pay attention to the piece of paper instead of
to you.
Go to other people's practice talks. This is good citizenship, and cultivating these
obligations is a good way to ensure that you have an audience at your practice talk.
Furthermore, attending others' talks can teach you a lot about good and bad talks
both from observing the speaker and thinking about how the talk can be better (or is
already excellent), and from comparing the the feedback of audience members to your
own opinions and observations. This does not just apply to practice talks: you should
continually perform such introspective self-assessment.
Other resources
Here are some other good resources for speakers who wish to give a good talk.
See Ian Parberry's speaker's guide.
The LaTeX Beamer documentation has some good advice.
Craig Kaplan transcribed some presentation tips from an unknown source, via Edward
Tufte.