Giving a Talk

Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Technical Seminars

Frank R. Kschischang
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Toronto

July 29, 1993; Revised September 24, 2000

Copyright c 1993, 2000 by Frank R. Kschischang

Giving a Talk: Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Technical Seminars 1

“Studies show that fear of public speaking ranks higher what you are talking about. This means that you should
than fear of dying. I guess this means that most people at understand your subject well, and be able to answer
a funeral would rather be in the coffin than delivering the related questions. On the other hand, it is impossible for
eulogy. . . ” Jerry Seinfeld any one speaker to be able to answer all questions that
might be asked. There is no shame in answering “I don’t
know” to a question that is asked—in fact, this answer is
preferable to an incorrect or misleading reply, or a “stab
1 Introduction in the dark.”

Often in your career you will be faced with the prospect Of course you must know when and where your
of “giving a talk,” that is, making an oral presentation presentation is to be held, and, if necessary, what
before an audience. These notes are a collection of a few specialized audio-visual equipment (slide projectors,
simple guidelines for preparing and delivering a “talk.” videocassette recorders, etc.) is available. You can
The basic principles are applicable in defence of your usually count on the availability of the ubiquitous
thesis, at conferences, in giving research progress reports (overhead) viewgraph projector. Discover that your pens
and the like. are dried out before your presentation! Technical
presentations invariably rely on some sort of visual aid,
These notes are intended to supplement—rather than usually slides or viewgraphs. (Whatever they are, they
replace—standard texts on public speaking and effective will be called slides in these notes.) More will be said
oral communication. The suggestions given here have about preparing these later.
worked well for the author and his friends; perhaps they
will work well for you too! You should find out how long you are required to speak,
and aim to have your presentation fit within the allotted
time. One good way to judge the presentation time is to
rehearse your presentation ahead of time. Another
2 The Basics method is to count slides; if you know your average rate
of going through the slides, this can work quite well. The
Define your message. If you have nothing to say, you author uses the “one simple slide per minute” rule of
cannot give an effective talk. Assuming that you do have thumb; most people use fewer. Experiment to determine
something to say, it is important to identify at the outset your own rate. If, for some reason, you find yourself
just what it is that you are trying to communicate. Write running out of time, don’t be afraid to skip slides.
down a short list of important points that you want to It is a good idea to keep your slides well organized in a
make (no more than 3 or 4). These points are often called folder, binder, or notebook during your presentation.
the “take-away message,” that is, the message that the This allows for easy retrieval during the question period,
audience should be receiving if your presentation is to be when, almost inevitably, somebody will ask you to put up
effective. Your entire presentation should focus on a slide from your presentation.
presenting the take-away message in a clear and
convincing way. Guard against making your take-away You may want to prepare three or so back up slides for
message overly complex, as this will only overwhelm the anticipated questions. Such slides could present
audience. interesting details that are peripheral to the main chain of
reasoning, for example. It is also handy to have a couple
of blank slides around, so that you have something to
Know your audience. To be effective, your talk must write on when have to explain something not covered on
be delivered at a level that is appropriate for your your other slides.
audience. You must analyze the background and
expectations of the audience to deliver the take-away You might want to practice your presentation at least
message in the most effective manner. This may mean once before a friendly (or simulated unfriendly) audience
modifying the take-away message, if the concepts a couple of days before your presentation. Talking to a
involved are beyond the level of your audience. mirror can also help, but even better is a tape recorder,
since you can play it back and hear yourself as others
Knowing your audience, you can begin to decide how will hear you.
much background material is needed to deliver your
take-away message effectively. Your audience will
influence your choice of vocabulary (technical jargon)
and may even influence how you dress! 3 Delivering Your Presentation
Prepare well. The best way to give the impression that Tell’em what you’re going say. . . An effective way to
you know what you are talking about, is really to know emphasize the take-away message is to repeat it several
Giving a Talk: Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Technical Seminars 2

times during your talk—without seeming repetitious, of the presentation of each new idea, or argument. More on
course. This can be accomplished by presenting an this later.
outline of your talk at the beginning. After presenting the
arguments that support your take-away message, you can Tell’em what you’ve said. At the end of your
recap these points at the end of your talk. presentation, it is a good idea to recap the take-away
A typical outline for a talk looks like this: message. The usual way to do this is to provide a
summary slide, with the take-away message shown in

Introduction point form. This summary will usually conclude your

presentation, except in the case of thesis presentations,

Point 1 where it is typical to provide some suggestions for

Point 2 further work. If appropriate, you can invite the audience

to ask questions at this point.

Point 3

Conclusions

where points 1–3 represent the take-away message.

Some speakers like to return to the outline slide after
each point is covered, to show the logical progression
through the talk.
The outline almost invariably contains some type of
introduction as the first point. Whether the audience is a
group of experts in the field or a group of novices, all
audiences require some type of introduction to your Avoid trying to dazzle your audience with impressive
topic. Such an introduction will attempt to place the looking equations or complicated lines of reasoning.
subject of the talk into a wider context; it will also
sometimes review some of the background material (e.g.,
history, terminology, and notation) needed to understand 4 Preparing Slides
the talk. For an audience of non-specialists, the
introduction may take up as much as half the time of the One slide—one simple idea. As already stated, each
talk. Always start with what you know the audience slide shown in your presentation should have a simple
knows, to make them comfortable at the beginning. message. It is important not to crowd too many ideas
The points of the outline should be organized in logical onto a slide as this inhibits understanding. Text is best
fashion, so that point 2 follows logically from point 1, presented in point form. Try for the maximum impact
point 3 from point 2, and so forth. Try to plan the talk with the fewest words—like newspaper headlines. If you
with an easy-to-follow story line. To catch audience write complete sentences, you will invariably simply
attention, you can feed them interesting tidbits to be recite them to the audience word for word, tuning your
explained later in the talk. audience out completely. Using point form on your
Avoid trying to dazzle your audience with impressive slides, you can elaborate verbally without distracting
looking equations or complicated lines of reasoning. your audience from your main message.
Your aim should be to educate, not to impress. Even the Avoid overcrowded “eye exam” slides. And show the
most seasoned expert in the field will not be impressed whole slide at once! Covering up parts of your slide with
by an unintelligible, overly detailed presentation. opaque paper is no help—the audience will just get
curious about what’s hiding underneath, and lose track of
Say it. . . Once you have placed the subject of your talk your message.
into the proper context and have reviewed the necessary Try summarizing each slide on a single line, e.g., in a
background material, it is time to convey the essence of box at the bottom of the slide, or by posing a simple
each of the points in your take-away message in an question at the top of each slide. This will allow audience
effective manner. This is where you will spend most members with wandering attention spans to “recalibrate”
time, but it may not be the part that the audience will themselves with your presentation.
remember most.
Follow your outline. Present—in the simplest way Use lots of pictures, few equations. Pictures are worth
possible—the arguments that support each point in your thousands of words—the more pictures you have, the
outline. A useful rule of thumb is to use a new slide for better. My colleague Glenn Gulak suggests the following
Giving a Talk: Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Technical Seminars 3

rule of thumb: never, without good reason, use more than Most computer-generated slides are prepared by
two slides in a row with no pictures. photocopying printer output directly onto transparencies.
Don’t make your diagrams too complicated. Use simple (The ECE photocopy room maintains a supply of these.
block diagrams; each simple block can be expanded upon Just ask for them at the desk.) Slides can be prepared
in later slides if necessary. using your favourite word-processing package—just
remember to use a large font (point-size 14 or more).
Graphs are the most useful way to present relationships Avoid too many font changes; use simple, easy to read
between variables. Briefly show an equation, if you must, fonts (Helvetica or another sans serif font) for headings
but spend the most time presenting graphs obtained from and labels. If you use LAT X, you may want to use the
E
the equation. Similarly, graph numerical data rather than slides document class, a version of LAT X specialized
E
presenting numbers in tables. Always label the axes of a for slide production. Watch for unwanted hyphenation;
graph, and always explain the physical meaning of the generally, text on slides should not be hyphenated.
variables being plotted, at least the first time that a graph
of this particular type is shown. Try to keep the same Figures can be hand-printed, or computer generated,
scale and size on graphs of a similar type; this will allow whichever looks best (or is most convenient). Many of
for easy comparison. Avoid graphs with many different the computer drawing packages can be used to create
curves. Include enough curves to make your general both the text and pictures for each slide. Finally, don’t
point—you can always claim that other curves are forget that you can always “cut-and-paste” the different
similar to the ones you show. Use contrasting colours to elements of a slide, each of which can be generated in the
separate curves, even if it means colouring a most convenient way.
computer-generated slide by hand.

The mechanics of slide preparation. Many effective

5 Other Useful Tips
presentations can be made with hand-printed slides. The
advantages of hand-printed slides are that they can be Relax! Try not to be nervous or intimidated by your
prepared fairly quickly, and without specialized audience. Give the appearance of calm confidence, and
equipment (i.e., you can write them on an airplane, or in focus all your energy and concentration on the message
your hotel room the night before your presentation). You in your presentation. If you are focussed on your talk and
can also easily introduce colour into your presentation. not your nervousness, so will your audience be.
The main disadvantage is that you have to be extremely Some inexperienced speakers will attempt to memorize
neat. If you cannot print neatly, then this method is not their talk, or read it from a prepared text. One word of
for you. Another disadvantage of the hand-printing advice: don’t! If you need to refer to a set of notes, put
method is that you might give your audience the them in point form, not in complete sentences, or you
impression that you did not have time to prepare will find yourself reading them out. The best method is
adequately, i.e., that you wrote them on the airplane, or in to use your viewgraphs or slides as visual cues as to the
your hotel room the night before the presentation. points you would like to make. If you keep each slide
simple—one idea to a slide—nothing will be forgotten.
At the start, determine the best place to stand so that you
are not blocking the projection or somebody’s view.
When placing a slide on the projector, make sure that you
look back at the screen to see that all is visible, and
adjust the slide if necessary. It is best to point at the
screen, if possible, rather than at the projector. The
projector moves if you get too friendly with it. If you
must point at the projector (if the screen is too far away,
for example) be sure to keep the pointer steady. Also,
don’t fiddle with your pointer, as telescoping it in and out
really detracts from what you are saying. Don’t fumble
with your slides. Throw away “tissue paper” separators
before your presentation.
Remember to focus on your audience, not on the
projector. Aim to speak slowly and with enough volume
to reach the person in the audience who is farthest away.
Look around, they won’t bite, and you can see whether
your points are sinking in. Interact with the audience.
 Giving a Talk: Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Technical Seminars 4


Ask them if they are following you, or ask them simple Further Reading. There are dozens of books in
questions to see if they are. Liven them up a bit. libraries and bookstores that cover effective oral
Take control of the questions, during or after the talk. Try communication. The IEEE Trans. on Professional
to steer the topic back on track, otherwise audience Communication is a good source of articles, especially
participation can drive things far away from the main the March 1980 “Special Issue on Public Speaking for
points of the talk. Take discussions off-line if they are Engineers and Scientists.” Another good way to get
consuming too much time or will not readily be resolved. public speaking experience of all kinds—not just
Feel free to interrupt debates among audience technical—is to join a Toastmaster’s Club.
members—after all, it’s your talk!
Humour can make a big difference, especially in dry
technical talks. Try to lighten it up a bit; especially after
6 Conclusions
some particularly heavy going. Cartoons can be an
effective way to draw parallels with points you are trying Finally, a last piece of advice. Giving a successful talk
to make. Even short verbal asides, rhetorical questions, takes a lot of effort, and more than a bit of experience.
or anecdotes can go a long way to keeping up audience Don’t get discouraged if your oratory ability is found
interest. lacking your first time out. Take seriously suggestions
made by your audience, and try to improve for next time.
Soon you will be an expert in the preparation and
presentation of technical seminars!

Acknowledgments
Gillian Woodruff made a number of excellent
suggestions that have been incorporated into this
document. Thanks Gillian! I am also grateful for the
comments of Glenn Gulak, Mart Molle, Rajesh Pankaj
and Pas Pasupathy. Rajesh made some good suggestions
for structuring the HTML version.1 Finally, many thanks
Try not to be nervous or intimidated by your audience. to Eric Mah, EE class of 9T3, for his great illustrations.

Learn by observation. In university, you are in a

particularly good position to observe others giving End Note
presentations. Take the opportunity to learn from the
mistakes that others make, and borrow (steal) techniques These notes are presented here in a rather preliminary
that you find effective. Watch carefully for methods used form to which I hope to make improvements in future. I
by your lecturers that improve your understanding. Be would appreciate hearing your comments on aspects of
careful, though, that you don’t pay so much attention to the notes that you liked or didn’t like, points that you
the medium that you lose the message. found useful or useless, and topics you would like to see
omitted or included in future revisions. Send email to
[email protected]. – Frank Kschischang

1 URL=http://www.comm.utoronto.ca/frank/guide/guide0.html.