How to give a talk

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How to give a talk

• Nick Feamster and Alex Gray
• College of Computing
• Georgia Institute of Technology

2
Outline

• Your purpose
• The content
• Detail and time control
• Engaging the audience
• Answering questions
• Preparing the talk

3
Outline

• Your purpose
• The content
• Detail and time control
• Giving the talk
• Preparing the talk

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Your purpose

• Wrong answers
• To give a verbal version of your paper, cramming
  all its content into one hour
• To impress people with your technical depth and
  thoroughness
• In fact, no one really cares about these things.
• Your talk is just an ad for your paper
• Your goal is to make people care enough to read
  your paper

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Your purpose

• People have devoted 1 hour of their time and
  attention to sitting in front of you, hoping this
  is not going to be a waste of time
• Your purpose
• Make this hour a positive experience for them
• Entertain and teach
• Get across 1-3 main points, or take-home messages
  (ultimately summarizable as 3 bullet points)

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Your purpose

• The very first thing to do when sitting down to
  make your talk
• Decide on your goal with this talk
• Get a job?
• Gain collaborators?
• Obtain feedback?
• Decide what those 1-3 take-home messages are

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Imagine your audience

• To do that, youll need to know your audience
• Estimate their general perspective, what they are
  used to hearing, like or dont like to hear
• Estimate their background in your topic
• You are almost always speaking to non-experts in
  your topic

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Imagine your audience

• Make it vivid relate the problem directly to
  your audience if possible
• As you make the talk, imagine exactly what
  theyre thinking on each slide, and as the story
  develops

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Outline

• Your purpose
• The content
• Detail and time control
• Giving the talk
• Preparing the talk

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The Content

• Same basic topical structure as a paper
• Intro to the topic and problem
• Brief preview of how the talk will progress
• Your solution
• Evidence that your solution is good
• Summary of the main points

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Tone/style

• But You can (and usually should) be less formal
• Explain it like you would to your roommate who
  is smart, but not in your area, over lunch, with
  a pen and napkins

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Tone/style

• When teaching (as opposed to impressing), often
  its most effective to get them to
• Understand the topic using the pictures you use
• Come to your conclusions taking the same path you
  took
• The font, and use of images/cartoons, help set
  the tone of your talk

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Storytelling

• Make a story out of it
• The human mind processes stories easily
• A story is a linearization of what happened
• How to tell a story
• A story has a beginning, middle, and climax
• A good story has a dramatic arc, which may
  build anticipation, contain surprises in the
  plot, and otherwise manipulate the readers
  emotions

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Storytelling

• Common storyline
• Theres a problem. Its interesting/important.
  Perhaps we start very broadly, then get specific
  and possibly formal.
• Hmm, looks hard. Previous attempts failed.
• Lets think a certain way for a second. That
  leads to a possible solution sounds reasonable
• Ooh - turns out that doesnt work. Darn.
• Lets think another way. That implies a possible
  solution. But it has a possible downside too.

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Storytelling

• We try it and indeed, it doesnt work. Darn.
• But We can modify it to fix the downside
• Lets briefly dive into how this works in detail.
• Now we try it, and works like magic!!!
• Here are further investigations of this
  solutions behavior.
• Lets consider the wider ramifications of this
  solution. Perhaps we return to the original
  broad version of the problem and see where we
  stand.
• Lets summarize what weve done in this talk, and
  what I want you to remember.

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Beginning and end

• First slide title, your name, your affiliation
• Your host may introduce you formally Prep
  him/her with your bio (education, what you work
  on, etc)
• In perhaps a sentence, summarize the topic of the
  talk
• Perhaps acknowledge contributions of others

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Beginning and end

• Last slide 1-3 take-home messages
• Say what you want them to do
• Contact you? (if so, give your contact info
  here)
• Read the paper? (if so, can give webpage here)
• Solicit a certain type of feedback?
• Leave this slide up while you answer questions

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Outline

• Your purpose
• The content
• Detail and time control
• Giving the talk
• Preparing the talk

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Detail and time control

• Your main challenges
• Their limited time ? You have exactly 1 hour
• Their limited attention ? More than a little
  detail will tire and bore them
• These are related The ways to limit detail also
  save time

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How many slides?

• For a 1-hour talk, you have 45-50 minutes,
  leaving 10 minutes for questions, interruptions,
  and starting late
• At the absolute most, you could have 1 slide per
  minute 1 slide per 1.5 minutes is often about
  right
• This means you have about 30 slides over which to
  get across your message(s)

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How to use the slide budget?

• About a third (yes, a third about 10 slides) on
  getting them up to speed on the topic and problem
• This is before getting into your solution
• If they dont follow this part, the whole rest of
  the talk is useless, boring, and annoying

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How to use the slide budget?

• About 2 slides should contain details that only
  experts in your topic would understand (e.g.
  detailed math)
• Sometimes called your intimidation slides
• Move extra slides on details to a collection of
  backup slides, which you can pull out if a
  question is asked

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Whats on each slide?

• Each slide should have one basic point
• The slide text and your spoken words need not be
  one-to-one
• Do not simply read whats on each slide the
  slide is a shorter visual guide to what you are
  saying

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Whats on each slide?

• There should NOT be tons of text
• Use sentence fragments
• Use big fonts
• Use a picture everywhere you possibly can!
• Saves text and thus slides
• Much more enjoyable to process
• Movies and animations (of worthwhile things) are
  even better if possible

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But dont leave out

• When graphs/figures are shown, include text
  explaining what its about
• Citations to others work, or your own
• Important make VERY CLEAR what is your novel
  contribution in this story
• Can do this by citing your paper on the slide
• Can do this with

New!
Idea
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Outline

• Your purpose
• The content
• Detail and time control
• Giving the talk
• Preparing the talk

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Giving the talk

• Be relaxed
• You know your topic well, better than anyone else
• This isnt a presidential election
• Get comfortable with the tools
• The little microphone
• Making your laptop talk to the projector
• Have a backup of the slides on USB key
• Laser pointer
• Wireless slide changer

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Giving the talk

• Engage the audience
• Move around
• Make eye contact around the room
• Use humor
• Ask rhetorical questions
• Encourage questions (caveat this eats time)

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Giving the talk

• Keep tabs on the audience
• Are they following?
• Spend more or less effort explaining, accordingly
• By their questions, what do they seem to be
  interested in?
• Address or shift focus accordingly
• Possibly jump to some backup slides
• Keep tabs on the time
• Know what slides you can skip

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Giving the talk

• End of the talk Signal that youre done
• You can say thats it, thanks for listening, or
  thats all I have, now Im happy to take some
  questions
• Leave up your last slide (take-home messages,
  contact info)

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Giving the talk

• Questions
• If you cant answer a question, say I dont
  know, Ill think about that
• Repeat/summarize the question if it was involved
  or hard to hear
• If pressed for time, or its too involved
• Can say in the interest of time, ask me that
  again after the talk
• Or, lets take that offline

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Giving the talk

• Questions
• Treat all questions as good questions, all points
  as containing some shred of validity
• Treat a hostile question coolly, like an
  objective scientist never display negativity
• Can start with Thats a reasonable thing to ask.
  It turns out that

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Outline

• Your purpose
• The content
• Detail and time control
• Giving the talk
• Preparing the talk

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Preparing the talk

• A good, coherent talk is non-trivial
• Dont do it at the last minute
• Your first talk might take you 2 weeks to get
  right
• People spend a month on their job talk

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Preparing the talk

• Practice
• Use other students as an audience, your advisor
  group meetings are often used for this
• Your first talk on a topic will totally change
  after getting feedback from your initial practice
  talk
• Practice alone for speed, fluidity, comfort
• You can get 50 faster