Abstract
Scientists often have to talk about their work in front of an audience. Even experienced speakers can feel intimidated when they have to give a presentation, but the main challenges can be addressed with a straightforward approach based on good preparation, careful development of materials, and familiarity with the possible pitfalls. A nervous researcher needs practice to become an accomplished public speaker, but with the right approach even a first talk can be successful.
Members [use] a close, naked, natural way of speaking; natural expressions; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can.
Bishop Thomas Sprat
History of the Royal Society
You, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.
Francis Bacon
Letter to Coke
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Notes
- 1.
Or set of slides. Or pack. Or, sometimes, of a set of overheads. To me, deck suggests the action of displaying the material in turn, following some sort of order or structure, and that is the terminology I use here.
- 2.
I’ve noticed that different disciplines have their own conventions for slides, and in particular that in biomedicine slide decks often consist almost entirely of images and tables. In such cases, the talk proceeds by explaining each slide in turn. It helps that biomedicine has research topics that are so visual! Common images include devices, places, activities, genomes, cells, organisms—from bacteria and viruses to trees and whales—and representations of statistical data. Also, intriguingly, biomedical slide decks often include photographs of members of the research team, and of historical figures, a practice that is rare in computing.
At the other extreme, some disciplines still have the convention of the speaker reading from a written script, with no slides at all. While it is rare that such talks are engaging, in what I remember as the best talk I have ever attended the speaker used a single slide, which consisted of a complex Venn diagram showing the relationship between government, politics, industry, and media. The theme of the talk was the impact of these bodies on researchers and funding at different stages of their careers. Admittedly, this was opinion rather than science.
- 3.
Earlier editions of this book included examples that illustrated positives and failings in slide design. As technology for presentations has developed and diversified, and a wide range of templates has emerged, it cannot be argued that there is a single “good” style. Moreover, elements such as dynamic images and animation are not easily captured in a printed book, and thus illustrations printed here would inevitably seem (no pun intended) unilluminating.
Curiously, some of the slide decks on the topic of “how to present well” seem to me to be chaotic, crude, or unpolished. It is clear that there is little consistency as to what is regarded as good taste and good style.
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© 2014 Springer-Verlag London
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Zobel, J. (2014). Presentations. In: Writing for Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6639-9_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6639-9_16
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