Effective Strategies for Delivering a Technical Talk
A technical talk is an opportunity to engage and inspire your audience, not just a data dump. Focus on conveying key points clearly, structure your presentation in three stages, and remember the importance of slides, soundtrack, and delivery. Use visuals effectively, avoid bullet points, and ensure your slide titles summarize the content concisely.
Download Presentation
Please find below an Image/Link to download the presentation.
The content on the website is provided AS IS for your information and personal use only. It may not be sold, licensed, or shared on other websites without obtaining consent from the author. Download presentation by click this link. If you encounter any issues during the download, it is possible that the publisher has removed the file from their server.
E N D
Presentation Transcript
Some pointers to an effective technical talk Krishna Jagannathan September 4, 2015
The Challenge A technical talk is an opportunity to impress your audience and to get them excited about your work It is not an exercise in information transfer
No one cares about your work Your primary objective should be to catch the attention of a typical, indifferent listener At a high level, focus on conveying the following 1. What have you done? 2. Why is it important? Why should your listeners care? 3. What was the key challenge/difficulty? How did you overcome? 4. What is the take-home message? One key intuition to remember?
Three stages Tell them what you will tell them o Positioning and motivation Then, tell them o Main contributions o Challenges encountered and overcome Finally, tell them what you told them o Recap and summarize the main contributions and significance o Take home message, key intuition, lessons learnt
Three things that matter Slides Soundtrack Delivery
Slides are just props Visual Anchor to the Soundtrack Sparse slides, no complete sentences o Roughly 12-15 slides for a 20 minute talk o Outline slide is overrated! Be as visual as possible o Block diagrams, toy models.. o If something can be explained with a picture, do it! Equations: only keep the most essential ones o Never go over long derivations or proofs you ll lose your audience
Bullet points are boring Bullets may be useful in listing advantages, disadvantages etc. It would be silly use bullets to describe a system model, for example draw a picture! Bad examples: (this slide is one!) N sensor nodes on a plane Rayleigh fading channel between them Nodes interfere within a radius R Moral: Bullets have their uses, but don t make your entire talk with them!!
Slide title should summarize the slide Bad examples: Conclusions Properties of FFT Convergence rate analysis Instead consider XYZ algorithm is optimal, efficient FFT efficiently implementable, scalable Policy XYZ converges exponentially fast
Slides: miscellanies Use legible backgrounds and font colours o PowerPoint theme colours and fonts are usually okay o Beware of using random colours on ppt or beamer Choose a legible font, maintain font consistency o Sans Serif fonts render better on projectors, esp at lower resolutions o Times has Serifs o Avoid illegible, highly stylized, or flippant fonts Caption all figures, label axes, readable font size
Soundtrack Practice, practice and practice Practice again Be pithy, technically precise Speak slowly o We Indians speak too fast perhaps we confuse speed for fluency!
Delivery and Body Language Face the audience, don t look at the slides while speaking Don t fidget around; No self-touching gestures o These habits immediately give away a sense of insecurity/tension Maintain eye contact with individuals in the audience, gradually shifting your gaze Emphasize important intuition, results with appropriate pauses/flourishes
Oh, did I mention Excitement? Energy and Excitement A great talk you know it when you hear one You know it when you give one!!
