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Guidelines for Presenting Your Research
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Standard Presentations
Professor Mendelson
presented a seminar before the 2002 and 2003 Graduate Research
Forums that provided valuable guidelines for students and
faculty about how to effectively present research (e.g., at conferences or in
job talks).
The MS Powerpoint slides from the seminar, in Acrobat (.pdf) format, are available
here. (If you need the free Acrobat Reader program to open the file, click
here.)
An
excerpt from a short pamphlet titled "Really Bad Powerpoint [and How to Avoid
It]" by Seth Godin is below; the pamphlet is available for $1.99 from
Amazon.com.
Four Components To A Great
Presentation
First, make yourself cue
cards. This feature should be built in to PowerPoint, but its not. You should be
able to see your cue cards on your laptops screen while your audience sees your
slides on the wall. Alas. In the meantime, you'll just have to resort to writing
them down the old-fashioned way. Now, you can use the cue cards you made to make
sure you're saying what you came to say.
Second, make slides that
reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with
emotional proof, that what you're saying is true not just accurate.
Talking about pollution in
Houston? Instead of giving me four bullet points of EPA data, why not show me a
photo of a bunch of dead birds, some smog and even a diseased lung? Amazingly,
it's more fun than doing it the old way. But it's effective communication.
Third, create a written
document. A leave-behind. Put in as many footnotes or details as you like. Then,
when you start your presentation, tell the audience that you're going to give
them all the details of your presentation after its over, and they don't have to
write down everything you say.
IMPORTANT: Don't hand out the
written stuff at the beginning. Don't! If you do, people will read the whole
thing while you're talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to
sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your
presentation.
Fourth, create a feedback
cycle. If your presentation is for a project approval, hand people a project
approval form and get them to approve it, so there's no ambiguity at all about
what you've just agreed to.
So What's On Your Slides?
Here are the five rules you
need to remember to create amazing PowerPoint presentations:
1. No more than six
words on a slide. EVER.
2. No cheesy images. Use
professional images from corbis.com instead. They cost $3 each, or a little more
if they're for professional use.
3. No dissolves, spins
or other transitions. None.
4. Sound effects can be
used a few times per presentation, but never (ever) use the sound effects that
are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage
the Proustian effect this can have.
5. Don't hand out
print-outs of your slides. They're emotional, and they wont work without you
there. If someone wants your slides to show the boss, tell them that the slides
go if you go.
The home run is easy to
describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience.
They sit up and want to know what you're going to say that fits in with that
image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they'll
see the image (and vice versa).
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