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[larryc]

If you must read your paper (and I so wish you would not) allow 2 minutes per double-spaced page. Though for thirty minutes I would hold it to 12 pages of text. So you need to cut what you have in half.

[temporaryname]

At my reading speed, it takes me one minute per 1-inch margins page of 18-point double-spaced text. I generally aim for 18 and a half pages, which lets me add in pauses and such to let things sink in at important spots.

Your reading speed may be slightly faster or slower, but if you figure out your reading speed in those terms it makes it easy to figure out if you're making it too long or too short as you're writing the paper--just switch the font size, and you have a time estimate right there.

[sugaree]

OP, you say you have "no intention" of going over your presentation time limit of 30 minutes, which is great. But the paper you currently have edited is still too long. You must cut further. It is not fair to send the complete paper to the commentator and expect him/her to know which parts of the presentation you'll actually be presenting. What if s/he prepares comments on stuff you decide to cut out on the fly because you presentation is running long?

I know it all seems so very vital to include, but as I wrote up thread, if I received a paper that I knew could not be presented in a 30 minute slot (and at 6200 words, you're looking at least a 40 minute presentation given generous approximations of 300 words/page and 2 minutes reading time/page, if not longer), I would strongly encourage the author to tell me exactly which pages they are planning to present. If they didn't, I could not (fairly) prepare comments.

[tee_bee]

 

   As an aside, I have seen lots of mentions of slides. At least in my area, biblical studies, I can count on one hand the number of papers I've heard where there were PowerPoint slides.  I'm wondering if slides are a discipline-specific thing (e.g., maybe psychology conferences expect slides while my discipline does not) or if I should be using slides even if hardly anyone else does. 

You're very astute. If slides are the norm in disciplines that don't use numbers, graphics, or other non-textual representations of ideas, then the norm is dumb. I have become a slavish follower of Ed Tufte, not because I believe he speaks final wisdom (that's the Tufte Cult), but because he makes one essential point: if you don't need slides, don't use slides. Just talk to the audience.

The other thing to worry about is the "cutting the paper down to so many words so I can read it in NN minutes." Grrr. In my discipline, very few people read from the paper. We work from outlines (and, God help us, unnecessary Powerpoint slides) and just give a talk, not a reading. I understand that reading papers in the humanities--at least in some humanities disciplines--is the norm. Is this true? If so, than those disciplines' conferences must be gawd awful deadly.

[systeme_d_]

In my discipline, very few people read from the paper. We work from outlines (and, God help us, unnecessary Powerpoint slides) and just give a talk, not a reading. I understand that reading papers in the humanities--at least in some humanities disciplines--is the norm. Is this true? If so, than those disciplines' conferences must be gawd awful deadly.

I'm in religion, and we do read from papers.  But they're most often written as presentations, not as articles.  Most (okay, not all) are quite lively.  There's extemporaneity as well.  And when we use slides (not often), it's usually for showing maps or vivid illustrations, not for text.

[bibliologos]

I'm in biblical studies, and I assume this is for SBL in November.  I frequently (ok, annually) chair sessions there.  Please, for the love of your favorite deity, cut it down to 2500 words max.  If you've got 30 minutes, then what you really have is 20-25, as usually we will reserve at least 5 minutes for questions (unless a separate question period has been built in, unusual, but it does happen).  If I'm chairing your session, I will pass you a note at 20 minutes telling you "5 min", another note at 23 minutes telling you "2 min", and at 25 minutes I will cut you off.  Very nicely, of course, but I will still do it.  If you ignore me, I will be unhappy.  Since I get to make decisions about what papers are included on the program, you don't want to make me unhappy.

So now you can think of me as the scary chair (and I may well be yours), and that should put the fear of whatever into you.

[wonderingphd]

I'm in biblical studies, and I assume this is for SBL in November.  I frequently (ok, annually) chair sessions there.  Please, for the love of your favorite deity, cut it down to 2500 words max.  If you've got 30 minutes, then what you really have is 20-25, as usually we will reserve at least 5 minutes for questions (unless a separate question period has been built in, unusual, but it does happen).  If I'm chairing your session, I will pass you a note at 20 minutes telling you "5 min", another note at 23 minutes telling you "2 min", and at 25 minutes I will cut you off.  Very nicely, of course, but I will still do it.  If you ignore me, I will be unhappy.  Since I get to make decisions about what papers are included on the program, you don't want to make me unhappy.

I have no interest in making the person presiding unhappy.  On the other hand, I don't think I can do what my proposal said in 2500 words.  I have already cut my paper from 8000+ words down to 4800.  I'm hoping to get down to 4000, but to get there, I think I have to sacrifice my argument being convincing.  2500?   I would have to cut out an entire section of the paper, and not do what my proposal said I was going to do.  I didn't know when I made the proposal that my paper would get so big, but it did.  I can't see any way to get down that small.  I"d have to follow the advice of another poster and ditch all my evidence. 

    Seriously, how do you argue for something that is quite nuanced and will take real data to show in 2500 words?  I ask that for student exegesis papers because they are not going to be able to work at the level SBL members expect of presenters.  I would have to skip pretty much any real discussion of the data that proves my position.  Yes, you put fear into me but I have no idea what to do with it.

[hegemony]

Being cut off by the presider after 25 minutes will also not do what your proposal said.  Your audience will not know what your proposal said; you are under no obligation whatsoever to deliver everything the proposal proposed.  No one remembers what you proposed any longer than it took them to read the proposal.  The proposal is not a contract, merely an entrée to the conference, a way to demonstrate that your topic is worthwhile and that you can put a sentence together.  Your main responsibility now is to adhere to the requirements of the session, which is not to go over your time.  This trumps all other considerations.  Seriously.  We're not making it up.  Another thought: would you like the previous presenter to go long and eat into your time because he thought he had to jam every idea in his proposal into his talk? 

[wonderingphd]

No, again I don't plan to go over my time. I have a respondent, however, so I'm assuming I won't be getting questions immediately. I have cut a bunch and I will look for some more but for the rest, I just plan on reading quickly.  I'm hoping to get to where it is sort of memorized, but while I've read about the differenes taht should exist rhetorically between a paper and a presentation, no one offered specifics, so I don't know what the difference would be.  Yes, it would be bad to go over, and I don't intend to do that.  However, would it not also be very bad to present a topic in which I assert abc but don';t provide adequate data to defend htat point of view?  I might not go over time but I will look pretty stupid.

[hegemony]

But if you read quickly, no one will be able to follow the argument.  You may not have heard a paper given at high speed because most seasoned conference-goers don't do it, so you may not have experienced how lost one gets when trying to listen to a paper like that.  The audience just zones out and desperately waits for it to be over.  An argument delivered orally needs to be given fairly slowly, with straightforward sentences and plenty of signposting.  If you speed it up, people really won't be able to understand it.  If the argument is so complicated that you need to give 4500 words of explanation, the best thing to do is to pare down the argument.  It's really not about getting through all the material; it's about shaping and pruning the material so the audience can take it in. 

[polly_mer]

However, would it not also be very bad to present a topic in which I assert abc but don';t provide adequate data to defend htat point of view? 

The point is that you have to make an assertion that can be backed up with the time available to you.  As others have mentioned, your proposal is not a contract; your proposal was a general idea of the topic that you wanted to present.  Now your job is to take a very tiny part of that topic, which can be presented in the alloted time.

For my favorite conferences, we do ten minute talks.  For one discussion group in which I am involved, you get two minutes and yet those talks are usually not less informative in terms of figuring out whom to go talk to about possible joint interests than half hour talks.

The point of a conference presentation is not to be exhaustive about your topic.  The point is to give a little flavor of what you are doing so that interested people can then go talk to you, read your written work, and be excited when your book comes out. 

Think of the presentation as your sales pitch for your fascinating research.  You say you cannot assert A, B, and C in the alloted time and back it up.  Fine, instead what you do is give a fantastic talk about A and then mention at the end that you are also interested in B and C so people should come hear you talk about them next year.

While I am a big softy in that I allow my students to have three sentences to explain their work when preparing for presentations, the start-from-your-main-point-and-expand-to-fill-the-time method is usually easier to get a presentation together than the spew-everything-then-cut-and-grimace method.

[temporaryname]

I'm in biblical studies, and I assume this is for SBL in November.  I frequently (ok, annually) chair sessions there.  Please, for the love of your favorite deity, cut it down to 2500 words max.  If you've got 30 minutes, then what you really have is 20-25, as usually we will reserve at least 5 minutes for questions (unless a separate question period has been built in, unusual, but it does happen).  If I'm chairing your session, I will pass you a note at 20 minutes telling you "5 min", another note at 23 minutes telling you "2 min", and at 25 minutes I will cut you off.  Very nicely, of course, but I will still do it.  If you ignore me, I will be unhappy.  Since I get to make decisions about what papers are included on the program, you don't want to make me unhappy.

I have no interest in making the person presiding unhappy.  On the other hand, I don't think I can do what my proposal said in 2500 words.  I have already cut my paper from 8000+ words down to 4800.  I'm hoping to get down to 4000, but to get there, I think I have to sacrifice my argument being convincing.  2500?   I would have to cut out an entire section of the paper, and not do what my proposal said I was going to do.  I didn't know when I made the proposal that my paper would get so big, but it did.  I can't see any way to get down that small.  I"d have to follow the advice of another poster and ditch all my evidence. 

Seriously, how do you argue for something that is quite nuanced and will take real data to show in 2500 words?  I ask that for student exegesis papers because they are not going to be able to work at the level SBL members expect of presenters.  I would have to skip pretty much any real discussion of the data that proves my position.  Yes, you put fear into me but I have no idea what to do with it.

In a presentation, your job is not to "argue for something that is quite nuanced and will take real data to show". Your job is to give the audience enough of a taste of what you're working on that the people out there who are looking at related sorts of things will think it's cool enough that they're willing to look up your work and cite you, or maybe collaborate with you (if that's done in your field).

It sounds like you don't want to hear this, given all the pushback you're giving--but it's true, if for no other reason than that nobody's going to be able to follow something so intensely nuanced in an oral presentation. You need to get over the brilliance of your paper and present what you need to, not what you want to.

[tee_bee]

I don't know how it is in other disciplines, but in political and other social sciences, there are rough page limits for articles. They can be bent,  but not broken, and the top journals are rather less forgiving. Your proposal was to do a particular thing in a certain amount of time. If your argument is so important, and so nuanced, that it must take longer, try to be the keynote speaker, if SBL has one, next time. And then publish your remarks in a journal.

[The very thought of people reading from a piece of paper...shudder.]

[wonderingphd]

In a presentation, your job is not to "argue for something that is quite nuanced and will take real data to show". Your job is to give the audience enough of a taste of what you're working on that the people out there who are looking at related sorts of things will think it's cool enough that they're willing to look up your work and cite you, or maybe collaborate with you (if that's done in your field).

It sounds like you don't want to hear this, given all the pushback you're giving--but it's true, if for no other reason than that nobody's going to be able to follow something so intensely nuanced in an oral presentation. You need to get over the brilliance of your paper and present what you need to, not what you want to.

I'm not trying to push back, as I have spent the last several hours trying to further cut my paper.  I do not have any illusion about it being brilliant.  Rather, I'm arguing for something quite debated in my field, which cannot be proved absolutely, so making a strong, evidence-based argument is important.  What is more, speaking as an adjunct (which makes me feel like a wannabe or groupie at conferences anyway, since I'm not _real_ faculty) I feel the need to look like I can construct and argue competently for my paper's point.  I'm not so much worried about leaving things out per se, but about not accomplishing that goal, which would be bad on the off chance that someone who might otherwise interview me some day is in the audience thinking, "what a lame attempt at an argument.  I'd never want this person for a colleague."

[hegemony]

The thing that will really make you look unprofessional is trying to squeeze a 4500-word argument into a slot meant for a 2000-word paper.  This is the kind of thing grad students sometimes try on their first venture out at a conference.  It is not well received.  They don't try it again. 

You may want to present a fabulously argued piece of research in your paper, but your audience is not going to be able to understand it because it will be given at such a hurried pace.  Your willing them to understand it is not going to make it understandable.  It will just make you look inexperienced.

Another mark of professionalism is taking the advice of those who know the ropes.   I wonder if resisting the advice of senior members of the profession has been a pattern for you?  Do you often believe you know better than people with more experience?   That might be holding you back.  In this instance, everyone on this thread but you is warning you against this plan.  I am reminded of the dictum, "Most people fail because they conclude that fundamentals simply do not apply in their case."