This is a summary of the How to Speak lecture by Patrick Winston.
I don't necessarily agree with everything mentioned here.
Start with a promise: what they'll know at the end that they didn't know before
- Cycle on the subject: repeat the most important things so people can catch on
- Build a fence around the idea you're presenting: so it's not confused with others
- Verbal punctuation: landmarks for people who lost attention to know it's a good time to jump back in (giving a scene of the talk with something like a roadmap)
- Ask a question: can't be too obvious or people will be embarassed to answer, can't be too hard either
- 11am: no one's tired, not too early
- Well-lit place
- Go see the place beforehand
- Should be reasonably populated (not too big or it will seem empty if there aren't too many people)
- Allows for graphic representation
- Speed of handwriting is close to that of speaking
- You should also use your hand to target things on the board
- Use physical things to explain concepts in a simple way when possible
- In particular difficult concepts might be easier to explain this way
- Props also make presentations more rememberable
- Don't read
- Be close to where the slides are so people don't have to divide their attention looking at two different places
- Use as few words as possible
- Keep images simple
- Remove background clutter such as logos
- Don't use a title in your slides, the person presenting is the one that gives a title
- Don't laser pointer!!!! use arrows inside the slides instead
- Use as few slides as possible
- Maximum of one slide with a super complicated network or smt like that to illustrate how complicated a concept is
- Exhibit passion about what you're doing
- Show cool things
- Have people think about things in a new way
- Storytelling
- Give context
What to show in presentations to e.g. get a faculty position. Do the following in 5min:
Show a problem that somebody cares about and something new in your approach to it
- Show steps to achieve your solution to the problem i.e. to get to your approach
- Conclude by enumerating your contributions (reviews steps and shows results)
- Why? because you get used to being famous, but you don't get used to being ignored. You want your ideas to get somewhere
- How?
- Symbol: have some kind of symbol associated with your work
- Slogan: something like "one-shot learning"
- Surprise: something different about your work that changes beliefs about a problem (in one-shot learning, that's "you don't need a lot of examples, you need one")
- Salient idea: idea that sticks out (not necessarily important; one main idea in your work)
- Story: how you did it, how it works, why it's important. A story of the solution
- Final slide: contributions
- Don't show collaborators, they should be on your first slide
- Don't have a questions/link to details page/"the end" slide
- Final words:
- Option one: tell a joke
- Option two: "ok that's it, bye"
- Option three: salute the audience - "i enjoyed the opportunity to get to know your research and environment and look forward to coming back"
- Don't say 'thank you': you're the one doing something for them