Hello there! My blog has been latent in recent months, mainly because after kicking it off with a long, rambling post about how sick I was of my master's thesis, I decided I should probably focus on that rather than try to start up a brand new blog.
Well, that perseverance did pay off, because in December I finally graduated from my program. Woohoo! To celebrate, I was offered a brand new job, had to start said job, and then was invited to present my graduate work at a conference in June. So, basically, I haven't had time to kick up my feet until approximately... now.
I gave my presentation this past week and it was awesome! Well, the getting up 2 hours before my usual time wasn't awesome, and I forgot how much coffee one requires at 8 am when having to present at quarter to nine, but all of that aside, things went smoothly.
I was asked to present the paper, which was based on my research during my grad studies, that I had submitted to this conference. Thankfully because I am not working in the exact field in which I studied, the pressure was sort of off --- I wasn't attending the conference to impress anyone in particular. I was there to share my research, and maybe (just maybe) provide a little shred of inspiration to someone else who was currently muddling their way through research as well.
(Okay, I am totally stretching the truth here. I was actually pretty damn nervous, and I always want to make a good impression, especially with other scholars whom I deeply respect).
I ended up working on my presentation off and on for weeks, and last weekend, I worked on it morning to night both Saturday and Sunday; planning, designing, and practicing. (I felt completely ridiculous practicing it in front of my bored and slightly freaked out guinea pigs).
Knowing that I would be presenting early on a day when everyone had to sit through several more hours of presentations, I decided to keep the presentation itself light. I poked around on the Internet, YouTube and various blogs trying to get some inspiration about how to make a presentation about an academic paper light and interesting (and dare I say - entertaining), but didn't find a lot of information. Finally, I ended up combining my own logic and experience with presenting stuff in front of an audience with observations I'd made from watching endless TED Talks a few years ago with my ESL students (even though I take issue with distilling complex ideas into 20 minutes or less, TED Talks were always a hit with them... and you have to admit, they are entertaining).
One of my favorite TED Talks of all time was with Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook. The talk, which she gave a few years ago, went viral soon after she did it, and for good reason. She conveyed her ideas and points clearly and concisely, and overall delivered a powerful and effective message that flowed well and was easy to listen to and follow along. (Talk embedded at the end of this post).
I combined some of the things I loved about her talk - and what I think made it so effective - into my own strategy for a presentation at my first academic conference. Here's what I came up with:
- Provide a personal anecdote. I love how she made her talk personal, and made it very clear, based on her own personal experiences, why this subject was so important to her. No one goes to one of these talks to hear your life story, but by throwing in a few personal stories and anecdote, everyone gets very engaged very quickly, it's different, it helps legitimize what you are saying, and I think it helps everyone feel like they can relate to you better or feel more connected to you (and thus your material).
- Use a little humor. In your personal anecdote or otherwise, I think it's great to lighten the mood once in a while with one or two jokes or lighter moments. This helps the audience relax and also draws them in to the subject.
- Make a point clear. After this talk, everyone watching knew her position on the subject matter. She told the audience what her talk was about beforehand, told stories and clearly supported her point in the middle, and then wrapped up the talk by going back to her first point and re-iterating why this topic was so important. With this flow, her audience could follow easier and really clearly understood where she stood by the end. She did not go off on tangents or leave stuff in the middle ambiguous: it all supported the "thesis" of her talk, and all wrapped up well together at the end.
- Passion for the subject. Obviously, she is so energetic when speaking on this subject, and her energy is conveyed to the audience! They really start to ride that energy. On a related note - don't sit down at a presentation. At the conference I was at, all of the presenters except me sat down, and while I believe they were well-intentioned by doing so and meant it to seem personal, like they were on the audience's level instead of the authority in the room, there's no hiding it: the person "on stage" does have the power during the talk, and by sitting down, it sucks the energy right out of the presentation.
- Dynamic speaking. Her body language in this presentation is great: she stands up tall, walks around a bit (but not so much that it's distracting), and overall conveys authority without seeming distant. I also admire how she was able to give this talk without any notes. I don't know what her strategy for memorization is, but I do think that talks where someone isn't constantly glancing at notes - or worse, reading them - seem far more engaging.
Now, obviously not everyone is going to have the same taste in presentations as I do, and it's not possible to be perfect or connect with everyone. But after sitting through my fair share of mediocre presentations - and after finding that there was very little direction for these sorts of things online - I compiled a basic to-do list for anyone trying to wrap their mind around planning their own academic presentation.
- Know how long it should be and build in some buffer time. I was given about 35 minutes to present my paper. This is actually a great amount of time: not too short, not too long. I planned on my talk being 20-25 minutes, and after lots of practice, got it to fit into that time frame. This leaves 5 minutes for questions at the end if there are any, and another 5 minutes for things you didn't plan on like the projector needing to restart or the computer freezing, or for your session to not start on time because the last one ran long and everyone is trickling into the room late.
- Outline your talk. This one will seem obvious - and it will also make people like me, who hate outlining things, really annoyed. I don't tend to think in neat and tidy lists and outlines, but for an effective talk, its the place where you need to force yourself to start.
- Structure your talk with a clear beginning, middle and end. Okay, this also seems incredibly obvious, but really, you need to think of it like a miniature story. An introduction, a middle where you present 2-3 important points, and a conclusion.
- Make it clear to your audience what you are presenting at the beginning. You should also remind them at the end, by summarizing those same exact points, what they just learned from your talk. Be very straightforward and clear: they're sitting through tons of talks all day long, and will want you to essentially hand them the information. They won't have the energy to think and connect the dots and figure it all out on their own.
- Don't try to fit the entire paper into your talk. Not only is this impossible, time-wise, it's going to be boring if you go into too much detail (see previous point: your audience is going to be sitting through talks all day, and they won't have the time and energy to focus on the fine details). If you really want to get some important details across, pick 1 or 2 to focus on or to use to support each of the main points you're hitting on, and then make it clear that they can find even more details in your paper. (And then you'll pique their interest and get them to read the paper!)
- Pace your slides. Don't spend too long on each slide. Instead, structure your talk in such a way where you roll through your slides fairly quickly.
- Use very little (or no) text on your slides. You should have, at most, 3 bullet points with maybe 5-6 words maximum per point on each slide. Do not write full sentences or paragraphs, unless it's a really important quote. If you do present a quote, don't read it; pause and let your audience read it (trust me, they will), and then explain the significance. Nothing makes me tune out faster than having someone read me a quote on a slide that I already read as soon as it popped up on screen. In general, keep in mind if you have a lot of text on a slide, people will be reading that rather than listening to you and it might be hard for them to "tune back in" to what you're saying.
- Memorize your content and avoid using notes. I didn't use any notes in my talk, but from podcasting and my background in acting, I find memorizing information and presenting it to everyone to be pretty easy: I use the slides as a small reminder of what I want to say. If you aren't comfortable without your notes, try to keep them to a minimum (so you aren't tempted to read them from the page).
- Be confident! Remember, there's a reason you were asked to give this talk. You are the expert.
- Provide your full name, email address, website and other information on a slide at the end. If possible let everyone know where they can download the presentation if they want! I would suggest doing this instead of making handouts. Handouts are distracting, waste paper (and cost money), and everyone gets a ton of papers and stuff to carry around at conferences - why add to it?
P.S. Watch Sheryl Sandberg's TED Talk below:
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