1.
Know Your Audience
One
of the most important things you can consider when preparing your talk is “who
exactly is going to be listening?” There are few things worse than talking to a
room full of people who are either bored or cannot understand you. When
preparing my end of year conference talk recently I had to bear in mind that I
was talking to a room of Psychologists from all different disciplines – ranging
from social psychology, to robotics, through to computational modelling. With
such a broad audience it can be difficult to keep it engaging, but remember
no-one knows your work as well as you do, and it is your job to get across to
the audience exactly what it is you do and what results you have found. The
biggest mistake you can make is getting too bogged down in minor details that
will not appeal to your audience – if I had been presenting my work to
individuals’ that study neurovascular coupling then my talk would have been
very different. As I was presenting my work to a room of Psychologists I was
sure to fully explain exactly what neurovascular coupling is, and to break down
my experiment paradigm simply and clearly before discussing any results.
2.
Keep Your Slides Simple
When
you are talking the audience will be switching between focusing on you and
reading the slides behind you. Presenting slides which are covered in text will
leave the audience feeling overwhelmed and may even lead to disengagement from
your talk. It is a good idea to only put your most important points in text –
in order to emphasize them. Using bullet points and tables to simplify and
separate your text can also help keep things clear. It is not just text which can
overload your slides however, there can also be an issue if you clutter the
space with too many pictures. As a rule with your pictures – the audience
should be able to discern some information about what you’re talking about by
looking at the images selected. Try to use diagrams and graphs were applicable
too rather than disseminating results via text.
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| Figure 1: Example of a bad PowerPoint slide |
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| Figure 2: Example of a good PowerPoint slide |
3.
Practice Your Talk in Front of Others
Try
to avoid going into a talk without first practicing it in front of others. As
the writer of your talk you will find yourself too bogged down in the details
to see the presentation from an outside perspective. Presenting your talk for
friends, family or colleagues will mean you can see how an audience reacts to
your performance. Perhaps you will find you need to remove a bad joke, or that
you have not simplified a concept enough for the audience to understand –
either way you will receive constructive criticism so that on the day of your
presentation you appear polished and confident.
4.
Prepare for Questions
If
you get nervous about the prospect of the unknown it may be a good idea to
think about what sort of questions your presentation may generate. Ask others
and think about it yourself as well – performing it for friends and colleagues
will also allow them to think of questions you may get asked following your
talk. Do take caution however, on the day you may get completely random
questions based in other people’s research interests; however preparation
cannot hurt and it will help you to feel calm and confident.
5.
Get a Good Night’s Sleep Before Your Talk
It
is never a good idea to spend the night before a presentation drilling your
notes or worrying about the next day. You do not want to seem too rehearsed!
Perhaps go through your talk a couple of times in the evening before you get
ready for bed, but don’t overdo it. Use the late evening to unwind and calm
down. There is only so much you can take in on the last day, and hopefully
early preparation will mean that you are not cramming the night before. A good
night’s sleep will allow your brain to consolidate what you have learned, so
you may even find that you can run through the talk better and more confidently
following a night of restful slumber. If nothing else, conference days can be
long and tiring and so adding lack of sleep into the mix may be a lethal
combination!
References
Images taken from:
“Bad Slide”
“Good Slide”
http://lacstrainingblog.com/2012/04/26/presentations-tips-for-effective-powerpoint-design/
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