Ten Commandments for Presenters

Going through some of my old files I had discovered this little gem. I was unable to fine a digital copy of it online and barely a reference to it so I figured I would repost it here for the benefit of any presenters. This is presented verbatim.

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Geotimes May 1999

Geologic Column
Ten Commandments for Presenters

By Hugh Hay-Roe

Anyone who has attended even a few earth science society conferences has noticed the range in quality of the presentations. Some papers are a joy to sit through; others can leave you confused, frustrated, or fast asleep. Presentations may fail because the speakers prepare the script as if they were writing a paper for publications. They forget that a paper given orally differs from a published paper in three crucial ways:

A live audience is like a group taking a guided tour - unless they have reviewed the subject in advance, they are totally dependent on the speaker to orient them before they set off. If the speaker fails to do so properly at the outset, the group will soon be lost.

Unlike readers, listeners cannot pause to re-read what they didn't understand. They cannot jump past the dull stuff to get to what interests them, nor go back to find an important point they missed.

Most people take in information better by eye than by ear, so visual aids are crucial. The more complex the subject, the more important it is to have clear visuals.

With those distinctions in mind, here are 10 guidelines for better oral presentations.

1. Define clearly what you wish to accomplish with your presentation. In most instances, your purpose is to inform, but sometimes your primary goal is to persuade. Or you may wish to entertain. Some talks are a combination of these purposes.

2. Write down in concrete specific terms what you offer to your readers (if it's information) or what you want from them (if you are trying to persuade). For example, don't write, "I want to tell them about the Yippahoopy Quadrangle." Write, "I want to tell them that the Yippahoopy Quadrangle is almost certainly the site of a significant meteorite impact during the Early Miocene."

3. Having defined your key ideas, present them at the beginning and - unless the presentation is very short - again at the end.

4. Organize your supporting information in a sequence in which listeners will most likely want it. To do that effectively, you have to know your audience - their technical backgrounds, main interests, and limitations. In the example above, you might present your evidence for the meteorite, offer questions and doubts, describe your field and lab methods, and finally discuss the implications of your findings.

5. Use visual aids that are attractive and highly readable. Never use a visual aid that you have to apologize for. A digital image projector (fed from a laptop or notebook computer and controlled by a "remote mouse") is the most effective projection device.

6. Hold onto your reading material until your talk is finished. The only good handout at the beginning of a presentation is a simple outline, with space between the headings for listeners to take notes.

7. Unless you are speaking in a very large auditorium, eye contact with the audience is important. But even in a vast hall, don't read from a detailed script. If you do, your voice will tend to drop to a monotone, losing its "vocal variety." Use cue cards (or cue yourself from your visuals). And practice! Get feedback from a "guinea pig" audience during dry runs beforehand.

8. Anticipate questions and decide how you'll handle them. Are you going to present anything that is controversial or extremely complex? Some listeners might ask about aspects you did not cover in your talk.

9. If possible, check out the logistics ahead of time - room arrangement, lights and dimmer switches, sound system, visual equipment, and other aids. Find out what assistance will be available, if any. If there is a speakers' breakfast, don't play hooky.

10. If you are the only speaker or if there is no printed program, make sure the emcee knows how you want to be introduced, and has just the information needed to do a good job (including the title of your presentation, if it's a formal talk). A good introduction will establish your credibility with the audience.

Some Tips on How to Present Science

Previously I had written a list of The Do's and Don'ts of a Professional Meeting that went over pretty well. Now, even though I don't plan on rehashing a lot of the material there (although I might someday) I wanted to add to it. The primary purpose of this post is to try and help people become BETTER presenters, or at least point them in the right direction to learn how.

More people should take time out of their busy schedules to become better at communicating. Without communication anything you do is just for yourself (which is fine in some instances). But if you can't communicate what you have done (in science, in your job, in a relationship) things are likely not going to go over well for you.

For Christmas I received 2 things that I hope can help me (and others) be better communicators. The first one is Don't be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson. Randy goes on to talk about the 4 main points of communication hangups for scientists (which were being "cerebral", being literal minded, being a poor storyteller, and being unlikeable). He explains that scientists are bred to be boring and dispel just the facts in their papers, but nobody wants to talk to or listen to such a person.

Being Cerebral:
The book makes several comments on not just communicating with your brain (like in a scientific article). You can do this through various parts of your anatomy: The brain (being cerebral), the heart (talking with passion and getting other people's passions fired up), the guts (feel it in your gut), and the loins (sex sells). Basically if you love what you study, let that come through. Get other people as fired up as you are.

Being Literal Minded:
Try to think a little outside the box as I have always been an advocate for. Don't just say what you mean but be clever.

Being a Poor Storyteller: 

He offers some suggestions on becoming a better communicator but I think the greatest point that he made was:

"Tell a good story"

All of science can be broken down into stories. It is the stories that people remember and it is these that people should be telling. Mix your facts and your numbers into a cohesive story, leaving out all of the ancillary stuff, to make one cohesive story. I told someone just last semester when preparing for his thesis defense: "Get rid of anything that doesn't fit into one story. The other stuff only detracts from it. You don't need to tell the audience everything you ever did for this project. Just the main points."

One of the points that was made in Don't be Such a Scientist was to loose the jargon. Not everyone understands what you are saying and often it just makes you appear pompous. I wish I had saved an email I received long ago when I was a member of the Vert Paleo Mailing List. Some scientist sent out a message that was so over the top with "fancy words" that people spent the next few days posting what they think he was trying to say. That may be an isolated case but it illustrates that scientists have a habit of speaking above people. I am reminded of a quote I heard in Real Genius (love that movie):

"You will rue the day!"

"Rue the day? Who talks like that?"

Randy also mentioned another project he had worked on in the book called "Talking Science: The elusive art of the science talk" (posted below).

 I recommend watching this. It is only 18 minutes and may give you some tips that you didn't realize (I figured out my pacing while I give talks may be a distraction). But I do have some criticisms of the video. My main criticism was that one person said "You can't over practice a presentation". I strongly disagree with this. If you practice too much you are bound to sound robotic as you are presenting. You need to practice enough in order for it to feel natural but also you want to remember the next thing you are going to say. Once you have that down, I recommend stopping and let it feel natural as you give the talk.

Even though I did love the book, one of my main problems with Don't be Such a Scientist was that it often felt like an advertisement for one of his movies Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy. The only problem with that is it ISN'T AVAILABLE TO RENT, BUY, or even SEE ANYWHERE (except a couple of campus viewings and by a couple I mean 2). Quite obnoxious.

Being Unlikeable:
My other Christmas gift was one of Randy's other documentaries (which is actually available), Flock of Dodos. This is about the evolution vs. creationism debates of the recent decade.

A fun watch and most informative about just being able to convey your scientific message. What is the best way to get your point across? Maybe being likeable is better than being knowledgeable.

Another way to be liked falls under my Don'ts at a Scientific Meeting. I went to the GSA (Geological Society of America) annual meeting last year (November, 2012) and I took some pictures to emphasize my point while I was presenting my poster.

#1. Know how to freaking use the damn sticky Velcro tabs. If everyone in the place (>500 posters) does it one way, they most likely know what they are doing. The Velcro tabs are meant to stick to the back of your poster and then the Velcro portion sticks to the board. They are not fancy pieces of tape as illustrated by this person:

Velcro sticky tabs used as basic tape

Close up of said sticky tabs

Really, if you don't take the time to learn how to use the Velcro tabs, why would I want to know about your scientific research?

#2. Your poster is not a "hang out" place for your friends. Nobody wants to look at your poster if there are a group of people sitting in front of it. This was literally what I witnessed as a group of at least 6 people gathered around the poster with no interest in the poster, they were only there because the presenter was their professor (or something like that). And they sat there for over an hour. Move on people.

Blocking the whole poster? Why would you say that?

That is all I have this time. I hope I have dispelled some knowledge and maybe made at least one person consider their communication skills and say "Hey, I can do this better".

The Do's and Don'ts of a Professional Meeting

So when I go wandering around a professional meeting, like GSA, I see a LOT of things that I would never have done, and I also see things that I would like to never do. Unfortunately I can be a bit hyper-critical, but it is just the way my mind thinks. So here is a list of Do's and Don'ts (mostly don'ts) at a professional meeting. Now since taking pictures of talks or posters and making fun of them online is frowned upon, so there are no pictures associated with these, but trust me they happen (and most happened this meeting).

Posters
1. Never ever ever EVER put up the title in separate sheets of paper taped together. I mean really, are we in kindergarten?

2. And while we are on that topic, this is the modern day, don't put up separate sheets of paper with colored construction paper behind each part. Print out a full poster like everyone else. It's not difficult technology, learn it.

3. Too much text. I saw some posters that had to shrink down the font to fit in all their text. Nobody is going to read that, nobody. Cut it down and make it larger.

4. Title size. The way I walked through the poster session is I looked at the titles and any that seemed interesting I stopped at. You should make the font size of the title LARGE and the length of the title SHORT. That way people can get the gist of it as they walk by.

5. Vivid colors. Make your poster stand out. Use large pictures. Make people want to look at it. Your in a session with 100's of other posters. Make yours different.

6. This one is just my feelings. Try to use more technology. I saw one with a projector, this is new and different. Try something that is interesting to get people's interest. Add some showmanship.

Presentations
1. Make yourself presentable. Make it look like you want to be in the front of the room. Exude confidence. I understand this isn't easy for everyone but practice will always help.

2. Use PowerPoint to work with you. If you want to highlight something, use PowerPoint to emphasize it. Shakily pointing the laser pointer at the screen does nothing to help your talk. Especially if you are nervous and you can't hold the pointer steady.

3. Busy slides - there are 3 versions this:
A. Too many graphs. I saw one slide with >20 graphs on one slide. What are you kidding me? Be realistic on what people will be able to understand
B. Too many pictures. 6 pictures on one slide is just as bad as too many graphs. Break them into different slides so people can actually see what you are looking at.
C. Too much text. People are NOT going to read a busy slide. They just aren't. Don't kid yourself that this info is important, it doesn't matter. Give the main points and extrapolate in your talk.

4. Learn to title a talk. If your going to give the title of your talk as a question, MAKE SURE YOU ANSWER THE FREAKING QUESTION in the talk. Also try to make it interesting, if no one understands what you are presenting on, your likely not going to get many people listening.

5. Sound interested. You obviously think you information is interesting enough to talk about, so sound like it. Monotonous talks are just boring.

6. Don't overuse PowerPoint. Yes PowerPoint has a lot of neat features. Don't use ALL of them in your talk. The best animation you can use is just "Appear". Unless you have a reason for using a different animation don't use it. Less is more.

7. Use decent picture. I saw many talks where the person said "now you can't see such and such but it is right here" or "this sign says such and such". Take another freaking picture. You will know almost instantly if your picture is good or not, blurry or not, what you want it to be of or not. I mean really. This should be common sense.

8. Don't apologize. If you accidentally flip forward just go back. Apologizing just takes the listener out of the talk.

9. Reference Slide. I didn't actually see this one at GSA but I'm sure it was there. No one is going to sit there and go through your references. Especially if you one stay on the slide for 5 seconds. Get rid of it. Don't use it. I mean really, this should also be common sense. If you have to reference something, reference it on the actual slide where the info takes place, put it on the bottom, in a smaller font, and out of the way.

10. Don't read off your talk (updated 10-27). Two points here, don't reitterate the title of your talk, more than likely this was already announced by the person introducing you. Also don't read off the slide. The people in the audience can read (probably) so you should just highlight some points on the slide and go into depth in your talk. We are not in 2nd grade and don't need a read-a-long lesson.



That is all I can think of right now. If anyone has any other ideas, let me know and I can add them in.

GSA Days 1.5-4

Alright I posted on most of day one previously so I might as well finish that up as well as complete my analysis of the rest of GSA.

End of Day 1 - Sunday
I mentioned previously the talks on Sunday so I will jump ahead to the poster session.

There were approximately 300-400 posters on any given day of the talk. I don't know about any one else, but this is a LOT of posters to walk through. Unlike some people I don't typically pull out poster titles or abstracts prior to the meeting and go and check them out. I prefer to wander around the posters and stop and look at the ones that interest/intrigue me. There were 4 people from my department presenting posters Sunday so I stopped and talked with most of them. I was also greatly intrigued by one poster where the person put a nail into a board, but in such a way that it was impossible to take out, or figure out how it went in. So he wanted his students to come up with hypotheses on how the nail got into the board. This was to show that not everything that is impossible was created by God (or something like that). It actually had me thinking about it the next day, so I say that was a good poster. Unfortunately I didn't really see any "next-gen" posters liked I hoped to (i.e. a little more tech, a little less tape and glue).

After the poster session I went to the welcoming reception. It was rather enjoyable. I didn't look at any of the exhibitors, I just focused on finding old friends or colleagues. I actually ran into a couple of old professors from Texas Tech (my Master's school) and talked with them for a while as well as the people they were chatting with. Overall good. I got a few free beers so I think it went well. Afterwards I ended up going downtown to the Rock Bottom Brewery where I had 2 more beers. Count that 5 beers total for the night. This is important to my productivity the next day.

Day 2 - Monday
So I woke up and I felt like I had died, and after only 5 beers. I felt worse than I had in a very long time (I assume now it was something to do with the Rock Bottom beers because my stomach was off for a few days afterwards). Well I promised to be at the University of Utah booth and help set up so I got my butt up and went down to the convention hall at around 8. Well after about 1/2 an hour I realized this wasn't happening so I went back to bed. I slept until about noon when I felt much better than before and wanted to head to the lunch lecture on carbon sequestration. Hopefully this one would be much better than the last.

Can CO2 Sequestration Help Solve the Global Warming Problem?
The one really big problem I had with this talk was that the answer to the question in the title was not what the talk was about at all. Not one iota. The answer was a forgone assumption that yes it can help, and here is how we do it. Other than that pissing me off it was a rather informative talk, but one I would have preferred if they titled it the correct way, instead of misleading us.

The rest of Monday was spent wandering around the exhibit hall. I also spent some time at the U of U's school booth. And got to meet some people through my advisor that I really wanted to meet. I was given some papers of Roy Plotnick's to read as an intro to my PhD research and I thought his ideas were fantastic and unconventional and I really wanted to meet him. So it was great that I actually got to. We talked for a good 1/2 an hour, and now hopefully I have a future contact I can use.

Well this interaction also left me late to something I also really wanted to go to. The movie A Flock of Dodos was being shown from 4-6 with questions being answered by the creator of the movie as well. This movie was fantastic. I recommend it to every geologist out there as a must see. I will have future comments coming on this as soon as I can buy it and watch the entire thing. There are some very good points that I would like to pull out from there.

After this I went back to my hotel, grabbed some dinner then went out to socialize with the geobloggers. That has been recounted many times over the geobloggosphere but you can check out a photo of everyone at Callan's NOVA Geoblog.

Day 3 - Tuesday
I felt better, so I was determined to actually go to some talks since my Monday was essentially a waste. In the morning I went to a bunch of paleontology talks, but nothing that really stood out in my mind unfortunately. A lot of talks seemed to be heavily math based and although I can understand math quite well, it doesn't lead to an interesting talk to sit through.

Well around 11 I found my advisor and we talked for a bit, then I had to rush off to the ad hoc eGSA committee meeting (Of which it took me forever to find and resulted in me being 20 minutes late). Tuff Cookie from Magma Cum Laude was also involved with this. That went rather well and I will probably be talking about that later as well.

Went back to GSA and sat through more talks, as well as one by my friend in an Andes uplift section. Now I don't know much about structural geology but I thought her talk went rather well and if I understood it then it was presented clearly and concisely, as well.

Afterwards I found myself with a bunch of sedimentologists from Scotland and we ended up going to dinner at a restaurant called Farm (I think) that actually had really good food. I was quite impressed. I also had a glass of wine (my only foray into the "From Volcanoes to Vineyards" topic of GSA this year). Then went out to some random bar next door with dead body mannequins hanging from the ceiling but they were playing like polka music or some other random variety of music that really had nothing to do with the theme of the bar. Weird.

Day 4 - Wednesday
Last day so I had to pack up all my stuff. This resulted in me being late and missing a lot of the talks I wanted to attend to first thing in the morning. But I must say that the luggage service that GSA offered was fantastic. I came in, dropped off my bag, then when I had to leave, came over and picked it up. No problems whatsoever, and easy as cake. Nice job.

Went to some more paleo talks in the morning and then in the afternoon, after wandering around and getting the complete feel of any remaining exhibitors that I may have missed, I went to a session on Promoting literacy about the earth sciences. And did I feel out of place. Well they didn't have an opening talk, just 15 minutes of opening remarks. Which, I got there early for because by this point I was exhausted from a long week. Then someone in the room had us all introduce ourselves. Well I don't know about anyone else, but I really have no desire to have everyone in these talks know who I am, and man was I tired. I was not too happy about this one. That and I had to leave right after the first talk anyway.

So after this I headed back home to walk through my door roughly at about midnight Wednesday night. Overall a great meeting, saw old friends and made a lot of new ones. I will probably have one more post that is generally about the meeting but more specifically on do's and don'ts in a professional meeting.