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[gbrown]

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:

• Run your topic by at least a dozen colleagues on- and off-campus who will be honest with you about your ideas. They'll keep you from stating the obvious and frustrating conference goers who thought they were going to walk away inspired. Hey, it's okay if you're not a genius... just don't give us what we already know (and have known for a decade).
• If your presentation or paper is about *problem* and not solution, be aware that some folks will be frustrated when they leave.
• Try out your PowerPoint ahead of time.
• Bring back-up technology. Save your PPT in several formats and burn it to CD, put it on a thumb drive, and copy it onto your own laptop. Then bring your laptop.
• Guess how many people are going to sit in on your session, then double that. Next make copies of your presentation (or parts of your presentation, or an outline) for your audience. If you're not bringing your presentation for copyright reasons (or perhaps you haven't, um, written it yet), please make copies the night before or the morning of. Don't tell us that you'll e-mail your work if we give you our e-mail addresses. The chance that we'll communicate it properly and that you'll remember are pretty slim. I've never, ever received promised materials by e-mail after a conference. I suspect I'm not alone.
• Practice, practice, and more practice. Time your presentation.
• Don't try to shove a 3-hour presentation into a 45 minute slot by talking fast.
• Leave time for questions or for workshop style groups to implement ideas or brainstorm.
• If you are co-presenting, please don't squash the other person in your zeal to communicate your ideas. This makes your listeners feel sorry for your beta-dog friend and we often wonder what we might have heard if beta dog had been given a chance to speak.
• Don't be offended if I bring a laptop and quietly take notes. I take conference going seriously and want to remember the good points you've made. My college paid for this and I want to share a few key points with others who could not come today. I promise not to steal your ideas. I promise.
• If you get an overenthusiastic audience member who bogarts the time, feel free to use your in-class techniques to tamp them down and let other audience members ask questions.
• Don't be angry if only a few folks come to your speak. Hey, we're not doing it on purpose! We just want to benefit as much as we can from the little time we have.
• If someone leaves during your presentation, assume it was rampant diarrhea. No one in their right mind would try to hurt your feelings by leaving midway without good reason.
• Try to walk around before and after, shake hands, meet people, and be approachable. There's nothing weirder than trying to thank a presenter who has allowed his or her only colleagues to create a cocoon around him or her.
• When you meet other conference-goers later (or the next day), politely smile if you recognize us. Most of us just want to tell you what a great job you did and how much we appreciate your work.
• 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.

Last, if you put a lot of work into your presentation, it showed. Know that I appreciate it. And not only will I benefit from your ideas, but every student who works with me afterwards will. That's got to be worth it, right?

Thanks for making me a better instructor!

[cranefly]

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.

[tinyzombie]

Bookmarking (conference newbie).

[prephd]

Most of those suggestions do make sense for my field. I've only given about half a dozen conference presentations, but in my limited experience, here's the things I'm working on:

• Guess how many people are going to sit in on your session, then double that. Next make copies of your presentation (or parts of your presentation, or an outline) for your audience. If you're not bringing your presentation for copyright reasons (or perhaps you haven't, um, written it yet), please make copies the night before or the morning of. Don't tell us that you'll e-mail your work if we give you our e-mail addresses. The chance that we'll communicate it properly and that you'll remember are pretty slim. I've never, ever received promised materials by e-mail after a conference. I suspect I'm not alone.

I once made 20 copies of presentation materials and had almost 100 people show up. Ouch. And I had designed the presentation to be interactive. I had to work on the fly that time and it wasn't my best presentation. I learned to be really explicit in my proposals, and that has helped (i.e., request a room with tables for approx. 30 people, etc.).

• Leave time for questions or for workshop style groups to implement ideas or brainstorm.

Yes. Some of the best feedback I've gotten has been from a presentation where we did small group brainstorming. The attendees loved it (it was the third day of a conference and they were tired of being talked *at*).

• If you are co-presenting, please don't squash the other person in your zeal to communicate your ideas. This makes your listeners feel sorry for your beta-dog friend and we often wonder what we might have heard if beta dog had been given a chance to speak.

Ouch. So painful. Not something I've done myself, but certainly something I've seen and had to painfully watch.

• Try to walk around before and after, shake hands, meet people, and be approachable. There's nothing weirder than trying to thank a presenter who has allowed his or her only colleagues to create a cocoon around him or her.

Eh, for an introvert, it's harder. I'm comfortable presenting, but awkward in small-talk. I'll stay at the front of the room for as long as people come up and chat, but after that. Well, I'm learning to *mingle.*

Something else I've learned is to ask for my own feedback. Even though most conferences I attend have a general feedback form that goes to the planners, most times the presenters will never see that. So, I create my own little evaluation and ask attendees to fill it out before leaving. It adds some closure to my presentation and allows me to work on things I didn't do so well. Plus, I can take it with me right then & there.

[minorleaguer]

As far as powerpoint goes - PLEASE, PLEASE don't try to pack too much onto each slide. I've seen both junior and senior scholars do this - and it makes me groan every time.

My approach for slideshows is this:

First slide - Title of the paper, my name, my affiliation.

Slides 2-10 - one picture and title of picture only.  This works with names, pictures of places, paintings of institutions, etc. Show a picture of an archival document.  Show an artist at work.  Give us something visually interesting while we listen to you talk.

Final slide - repeats the title of my paper, my name, my affiliation, and how to get in touch with me. 

For example, if you start your talk with Christopher Columbus - throw up a portrait of him for slide two.  Then for your next slide, show a picture of the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria as you talk about the conditions on the ships. 

DON'T put a picture of Columbus on one side, with ten tiny bullet points about his life to the right.  It is hard or impossible to read all of that while trying to listen to you talk about your subject. 

[tee_bee]

As far as powerpoint goes - PLEASE, PLEASE don't try to pack too much onto each slide. I've seen both junior and senior scholars do this - and it makes me groan every time.

My approach for slideshows is this:

First slide - Title of the paper, my name, my affiliation.

Slides 2-10 - one picture and title of picture only.  This works with names, pictures of places, paintings of institutions, etc. Show a picture of an archival document.  Show an artist at work.  Give us something visually interesting while we listen to you talk.

Final slide - repeats the title of my paper, my name, my affiliation, and how to get in touch with me. 

For example, if you start your talk with Christopher Columbus - throw up a portrait of him for slide two.  Then for your next slide, show a picture of the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria as you talk about the conditions on the ships. 

DON'T put a picture of Columbus on one side, with ten tiny bullet points about his life to the right.  It is hard or impossible to read all of that while trying to listen to you talk about your subject. 

Big loud Chime. And, for the love of whatever diety or dieties you worship, do NOT talk to your effing slides! Talk to the audience. PRINT the slides out so you can refer to them if you cannot see over your shoulder.

If I walk out of your cr@ppy Powerpoint presentation, I hope you do take it seriously, because it means that your slide show sucks. If you have only ten minutes, twenty slides, and no information that requires on-screen graphics to impart, than don't use Powerpoint. How hard is this to grasp?

I'd be retired and wealthy if I had a dime for every speaker who said "I know you in the back [yes, and in the frakking front row too] can't read the model output in 10 point type (giggle) [code for: we ginned up this garbage on the flight here] but as you can see from the probit coefficients...." No, we can't, ding dong, because we can't see them, and you should have learned on day one of your "Advanced Cookbook Methods with Stata, Now with Free Code!" course that the coefficients are hard to directly interpret.

Sorry. Recent experience. It still hurts.

And grad students in the social sciences. Never show up to a panel where you say "well, I didn't have time to collect and analyze the data for my hypotheses, but if I did they'd say that...." Oh really?

Of course, this all differs from field to field. But my work is pretty interdisciplinary, from engineering to political science, and I've learned that good conference presentations have common features across disciplines--minorleaguer shows some good techniques--but that poor presentations also transcend discipline, field, and method.

Thanks for allowing me to vent on the bane of my profession--lame presentations.

[donstefano]

- A conference is not a place to experiment with software. I don't care if you work with vista, but if you only bring your powerpoint saved as .pptx, you have a problem. Even computers at big conference centres haven't even bothered to install the add-on that allows you to play pptx on older windows versions. Always use old versions of software.
- do not assume the wireless internet will work. If you want to show an exract from a youtube clip, save it locally, in different versions.
- do not, ever, go overtime. If you get 10 minutes to talk, talk 10 minutes, not longer. Especially not when you are the last speaker in the session. If the session is scheduled to end at 3pm, nothing you say after 3pm will matter, and will only annoy the audience.

[ab_grp]

I'd be retired and wealthy if I had a dime for every speaker who said "I know you in the back [yes, and in the frakking front row too] can't read the model output in 10 point type (giggle) [code for: we ginned up this garbage on the flight here] but as you can see from the probit coefficients...." No, we can't, ding dong, because we can't see them, and you should have learned on day one of your "Advanced Cookbook Methods with Stata, Now with Free Code!" course that the coefficients are hard to directly interpret.

Chime on this! I'm sure it varies by field, but one thing that I've learned over the years is that if I have 10-12 minutes to present to what is usually an audience with different levels of technical knowledge, I no longer even present numbers if possible.  First, they are nearly impossible to cram onto a slide in a way that's readable.  Second, folks don't often have time to take in all the numbers (coefficients, factor loadings, whatever) that are relevant.  Third (and maybe most important), I think that it's critical to get the big picture across in the allotted time, and that should focus on the main area of the study.  Maybe the research is on a subgroup, so focus should be on the inferences and implications with respect to the subgroup.  Maybe the primary interest is in the method, so more time should be focused there.  The focus is rarely (at least in my field) on the particular numbers that come out of statistical analyses.  If you can display the information in a well-designed graph, that's great.  Sometimes it even makes sense to just summarize the inferences you're making based on the statistical results, rather than directly convey those results.  In that case, I do think it's okay to offer to send the more complete results after the session to those who are interested.  I provide my email (which is usually in the conference program anyway) and business card, and usually get several emails after the conference.  I see a lot of newer colleagues try to present every piece of output, and it's too much.  In some ways, I think they're hiding behind it.  Of course, YMMV.

And a big chime on the software/technology advice posted here.  Always be prepared, test ahead of time, and never assume that your presentation will be compatible with what's available.  Try to be flexible.

[tee_bee]

- do not, ever, go overtime. If you get 10 minutes to talk, talk 10 minutes, not longer. Especially not when you are the last speaker in the session. If the session is scheduled to end at 3pm, nothing you say after 3pm will matter, and will only annoy the audience.

Yes! Going overtime is a far worse sin than unreadable slides (that's the second worst sin). When I was a junior prof, I'd just sit there, on the panel, and stew. Now that I'm senior and cranky, I tell the chair, in a stage whisper, that "if you don't shut this clown up, I will." That helps. But it's a drag to have to do it.

Any panel chairs listening? Shut them up after their time is over. Period.

• ne thing that I've learned over the years is that if I have 10-12 minutes to present to what is usually an audience with different levels of technical knowledge, I no longer even present numbers if possible.  * * * Sometimes it even makes sense to just summarize the inferences you're making based on the statistical results, rather than directly convey those results.  In that case, I do think it's okay to offer to send the more complete results after the session to those who are interested. 

Yes!! I am so sick of papers (I'm a social scientist) that explore an interesting (or banal) question and spend more time on their new "Uruguayan reverse probit regression with correction for tidal influences and the Mayan calendar" than on anything like findings. Indeed, the more time spent on the technique, the less interesting the results.

It's way beyond the scope of this thread, but we really, in the social sciences, need to rethink the way we present at conferences. The usual "four papers, 10 minutes each, with some comments from the discussant" format truly sucks, especially when the discussant makes no effort to draw out common themes in the papers. It's no wonder I hardly ever attend panels any more, when it's more stimulating to meet with publishers, browse the book room, or just catch up with friends, classmates, and collaborators.

[madhatter]

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?

[aandsdean]

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?

MLA.  Look for sessions with presenters from prestige programs.

[mended_drum]

I don't understand the first bullet point in the OP's post:  why do you have to run your idea by anyone?  At what kind of conference would you present anything without having read (nearly) everything on your topic before trying to contribute?  Or is this field-specific? 

[tee_bee]

I don't understand the first bullet point in the OP's post:  why do you have to run your idea by anyone?  At what kind of conference would you present anything without having read (nearly) everything on your topic before trying to contribute?  Or is this field-specific? 

Mended, you're not a political scientist, are you? I've seen presentations, by senior scholars, who were run by only one person before being presented--they were run by the flight attendant, whilst asking for a second Jack and Coke, as our intrepid scholar wrote the paper, on the plane. It's not often, but it's often enough.

And for the grad students who say "I didn't get as far as I'd like with my data, but they will show that..." Either they didn't run this by their advisors. Or their advisors are chowderheads.

People can, of course, read everything there is in their field and come up with foolish ideas for conferences. Or is this field-specific? ;)

[notaprof]

I would just talk over the speaker saying, "I'm going to have to break in and stop you right here so the rest of the panel can present their topic."  However, I would more likely be the one who would not stop talking because when I get in front of an audience I have no clue what I am saying or how long it is going on.  It would be a favor to me if you made me stop and put me and everyone else out of their misery. 

[tee_bee]

Chime on the keep-it-in-the-alloted-time comments. Practice your presentation and time your presentation. When you practice, you should have a minute's wiggle-room, just in case.

On a side note, I'm chairing a panel at MLA. Four presenters on the panel (including yours truly) all more big name than yours truly.

Once, I sat in the audience during a session in which one of the presenters absolutely would NOT STOP TALKING. The chair handed over the "finish now card" three or four times, but the speaker would NOT STOP TALKING. It was soooo awkward.

I don't want to hijack the thread--but I'm having bad dreams about this happening on my panel. Probably it won't. But what would you do?

I have gotten up and said "If you don't shut him up, I will" when the blowhard when 2x over time. I was discussant on that panel. It would be harder to do from the audience. Some throat clearing might work, but that's passive aggressive. I'd let the panel or conference organizer know that the chair wouldn't enforce time, and that failure to do so was really a problem. During the panel, you might get two or three of you to walk out en masse, but that means you might miss a useful or important presentation. My sense is that anyone who goes far over time is not doing anything useful or important, because good scholars know how to give a proper presentation.