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[galactic_hedgehog]

At the risk of repeating myself, I've made the following observations in the past, about oral presentations at a scientific meeting.  Let's imagine three talks:

First, Dr. Young But Already A Star.  The problems?

1. Too much background material.  You have about 12 minutes (out of 15) to make your point(s).  Don't spend a third to half of you time going over stuff that most, if not all, of your audience already knows.  Background is good.  Informing your audience is something they might be unfamiliar with is good.  But you have to assume they have a certain level of basic knowledge and give yourself enough time to teach them something new.

2. Too much background material.  On the powerpoint slides, I mean.  Please do not choose a picture that's too complicated or a lousy color or just too distracting.  It makes it difficult to read what's there. Speaking of which,

3. Too much text.  Way too much.  They're competing with the figures.  Don't put words all over the place.  Put enough there to lead into what you're going to say.  And when you do,

4. Don't read everything on the slide.  You can get away with it if there's not a lot there, but you want to introduce the important points and tell us more, like what you would have put there if you were going to put everything on the slide.

5. Some figures were too small.  That can happen when there's too much text on the slide.  Even when there's not, make sure axes, labels, symbols, etc., are large and easy to see.  Please.

6. When you're done, make sure that if/when you answer a question, make sure everyone can hear you.  If the session chair is the questioner, don't turn and speak directly to her, facing away from the mike, if it's not clipped to you.  And consider repeating the question for those of us in the back who might not have caught it.

To be honest, overall it wasn't terrible, but Dr. YBAAS should know better.

Next: Prof. Seasoned.  Great talk.  Why?

1. Good choices of fonts, colors, and background pictures (none).  It was easy to read what was up on the screen and you could get through it quickly (i.e., not too much there) and not miss out on what was being said, which was a

2. Well thought-out narrative.  Prof. S had an excellent overall story to tell and each slide led logically into the next, starting with

3. Just the right amount of background, setting up the main points of the talk and putting everything into context.

But the best talk was by Dr. Up and Coming, despite that (or because) the computer ate her presentation.  "How's that?" you ask?  Well, Dr. UAC plunged straight into it.  She knew her stuff and what should have been there and took us through it.  She didn't need to look at her slides to know what to say; she just said it.  She told us a story, complete with beginning, middle, and end, and we hung on every word.

Having now sat through two fantastic presentations like this (the first was even better; years later I still remember it), I have decided that, I, and everyone else, should, in addition to practicing the talk normally, practice it without slides.  People should know what they're saying and what they're showing.  They should know where it came from and how it was made.  They should give a talk, and not be a powerpoint parrot.

[tee_bee]

This reminds me of my first job talk, many years ago. Nervous as hell, had my notes typed out in big print on big sheets of paper to look sort of like a teleprompter. But, as I started the talk, this feeling of calm sort of came over me because I'd practiced the talk about a zillion times, and knew it really well. All I really needed was two or three transparencies (yes, it was that long ago), and it was one of the best talks I have ever delivered.

Now that I am a bit less nervous about presentations, I sort of rely on my Powerpoints too much. The prior comment has inspired me to try to break this habit.

[yellowtractor]

i see  here  www.ebay-cellphone.com

Hurrah!  Follow the bouncing spam!

[prephd]

See Jane run?

[_ook_]

See Jane run?

Where Jane?  Ook need wife!

[lerasmus]

I just returned from a conference. Got a lot out of it. Loved it. I just wanted to make a few gentle suggestions to those who may be presenting at a conference in the future:

• If you're married, please don't pick up a local, hotel or service staff member, or colleague while we're watching. Somehow it's demoralizing.

That is definitely discipline-specific.

For the love of all that is holy, do not decide to rewrite your paper the night before the presentation.  The result will be incoherent and rambling, and will not bear any resemblance at all to the handout you sent to the conference organizers, and which is distributed to your audience.

That's the only way I produce anything coherent (and I'm known for coherent and focused papers). One needs to learn one's ideal writing flow. For many, last-minute rewrites may be a disaster, but not universally.

[biologist_]

Some of these suggestions are very conference and/or field-specific.
I don't agree with several of them.

In my field, conference papers are typically a maximum of 20 minutes, during which time you can hope to get one main point across. There are chairs who stop you after 20 minutes that may or may not allow for questions afterward. It's very common for people to duck out of boring sessions. We're all busy and don't want to waste our time on boring or irrelevant speakers. So you should take it personally if someone skips out. It may be that your paper is irrelevant to them, but you may be boring. Nobody hands out copies of their presentation. Nobody. Speakers may have a few copies of a related paper at hand in case someone asks, but even that is rare.
Nobody co-presents, either. If two people worked on it, one person presents.

I'd never run a topic by a colleauge, either, unless I'd never been to the conference and it was outside my field. Even then I'd likely just look at what had been covered in the previous year. Certainly I'd never ask "At least a dozen colleagues". Good lord, my colleagues are far too busy for that kind of stuff and they'd be sure to laugh at me.

So, where are these conferences for Solipsistic Fast-Talking Rudeness Studies Without Handouts?

Several of Cranefly's comments apply to biology, or at least to the biology conferences that I've attended.

No one gives out handouts.  If an audience member is interested, he talks to the speaker afterward or jots down the name and looks for the published paper to come out soon.
20 minutes per talk is typical, unless you're giving a big plenary talk of some sort.
Grad students (and maybe postdocs) get feedback on their talks before they give them.  After that, you should know what you're doing.

Fortunately, we have data in our talks so there's always something new to talk about and something to put on the slides (unless you submitted the abstract based on wishful thinking or n=1 five months ahead of time and things didn't pan out).  Bullet points are almost always used sparingly.

Many excellent talks are put together on the plane to the conference.  However, the data were already in hand.  It was just a matter of slapping the graphs or images into powerpoint, adding a flow chart or some photos, and tidying everything up.

[frogfactory]

I've definitely been surprised at how different presentations in general and workshops/conferences are handled in different disciplines, and my experience of sciences accords with cranefly's and biologist_'s.  I attended, for various reasons, a humanities (philosophy) seminar series and workshop (really, a mini conference in format).

On thing that really stood out was that a) there were handouts (why?) and b) Many of the presentations consisted simply of the presenter directly reading their paper out loud from beginning to end in front of some summary slides.  I asked one of the grad students why that was done so often, since it would never fly in the sciences.  She told me that, if you've worked really hard to word your argument perfectly, it would be silly not to use exactly the same words when you present the paper as a talk.

Is that normal?  Or was it a weird regional thing?

[bibliologos]

Is that normal?  Or was it a weird regional thing?

Normal.  In the humanities, generally the "data" is well known -- I'm a biblical scholar, for instance.  Therefore, what is important is the interpretation of the data, and the exact wording can be extremely important.

That said, it is possible to write a paper for "performance," i.e. the conference, and another version for publication.  The performance version can also be read with style and verve.  Alas, it often is not.

[frogfactory]

I don't mean this in any offensive way, but what's the point of going to a talk if you could just read the paper yourself at home?  I can't quite see the point of this type of talk - the idea is kind of foreign to me.  Are the talks just a pretext for networking at the conference?

[galactic_hedgehog]

I don't mean this in any offensive way, but what's the point of going to a talk if you could just read the paper yourself at home?  I can't quite see the point of this type of talk - the idea is kind of foreign to me.  Are the talks just a pretext for networking at the conference?

We could do the same thing in the sciences.  An important aspect of the conference is to ask questions and talk with your colleagues.  Sometimes the data is as presented.  Sometimes important points come out during the questioning.  Sometimes, even new insights are are realized.  This isn't just during oral presentations.  It's an important part of a poster presentation in the sciences, one that, I think, makes posters so valuable.

[bibliologos]

I don't mean this in any offensive way, but what's the point of going to a talk if you could just read the paper yourself at home?  I can't quite see the point of this type of talk - the idea is kind of foreign to me.  Are the talks just a pretext for networking at the conference?

Indeed, for finished papers (like presidential addresses, for example) one is better off reading them when they're published.  But going to something like a presidential address is part of the networking ritual.

Ideally, a typical paper presentation is unfinished, i.e., open for questions and discussion that will improve it when being prepared for publication.  It is also much shorter than a typical article (usually about 2000-2500 words, as opposed to the ca. 6000 word article), and so gives only a taste of the full article.  I use the paper presentation to see if my main argument will fly before submitting it for publication.  Good questions and discussion also helps improve the paper.

But yes, part of the paper presentation ritual is part of the networking ritual.  By giving a paper, others can see what you're working on, which can lead to fruitful discussion and possible collaboration.

[lorelei]

Here's a couple of tips at the proposal stage:

Put your name on the flippin' page with the abstract. When they're all printed out, it's kinda helpful to know who submitted what.

And this would be helped further if you actually put your Name and University somewhere in the email too. If the email comes from fastguy9000@hotmail and it says "Here's my abstract. Thanks, Tim" - seriously wtf?

Students get critiqued for this all the time but it appears (after some FBI-worthy sleuthing we shouldn't have to do) we're getting this kind of thing from established academics.

[temporaryname]

Here's a couple of tips at the proposal stage:

Put your name on the flippin' page with the abstract. When they're all printed out, it's kinda helpful to know who submitted what.

And this would be helped further if you actually put your Name and University somewhere in the email too. If the email comes from fastguy9000@hotmail and it says "Here's my abstract. Thanks, Tim" - seriously wtf?

Students get critiqued for this all the time but it appears (after some FBI-worthy sleuthing we shouldn't have to do) we're getting this kind of thing from established academics.

Some of us are in fields where if you put your name(s) and/or affiliation(s) on the page with the abstract, your abstract is discarded without further consideration.

That said, yeah, we generally put our names and affiliations in the email. (In fact, the calls for paper usually direct us to do so.)

[cranefly]

Some of us are in fields where if you put your name(s) and/or affiliation(s) on the page with the abstract, your abstract is discarded without further consideration.

That said, yeah, we generally put our names and affiliations in the email. (In fact, the calls for paper usually direct us to do so.)

Yep. They're supposed to be blinded in many of my conferences. Putting your name on the abstract is a HUGE faux pas.