Presenting Your Presentation

1. Presenting Your Presentation William Martin (Based on Presentation by Harishwaran ‘Hari’ Hariharan)August 24th, 2012

2. Why Are We Here? • Engineers are not known for their ability to communicate ideas • Communication skills are essential for getting a research position in academics and industry

3. Why Are We Here? “…You also have taught me how to create and give a bad ass presentation.  Last semester I took a Philosophy class where we gave presentations and summaries on articles we read. After one of my presentations the professor told me that it was close to the worst presentation that he had ever heard while teaching that class. (I had honestly spent almost 15-20 hours on that presentation/summary/delivery) So coming into this class I was pretty bad at all of that. Because of you, I have been able to earn a job by giving them an awesome presentation when I went onsite for an interview…” - A prior ECE 400 student

4. Overview Suggestions for a Successful Oral Presentation (Public speaking skills) Building Your Technical Presentation (Presentation mechanics)

5. Suggestions for a Successful Oral Presentation • Define goals • What is the purpose of the presentation? • Planning ahead • Make the presentation count • Useful presentation skills for getting your point across • “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have”

6. Goals of a Presentation What are you trying to accomplish? • Update coworkers on the status of your project? • Communicate technical material? • Convey a new idea to a group of your peers? • Get people to read your paper? • Get a job?

7. Plan Ahead • Know your information • Know your audience • What do they expect? • What is their background? • If someone has presented before you: • Use their work to provide context for your work • Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse!

8. Rehearsal THE most critical, and often ignored, part of preparing for a presentation • Create the presentation in advance • Don’t wait until the day before • Don’t worry if things change • Practice your presentation • To yourself and to a live audience • Clarity of material • Timing

9. Making the Presentation Count • Maintain control of the presentation • Put yourself in the audience’s position • Relate your work to others’ • Allocate your time appropriately • Use the high-interest times wisely • Audience interest is highest at the beginning and end of your presentation

10. Delivery Focus on how you present your material…is it interesting? • Attitude/Style • Voice • Body language • Eliminate verbal filler (‘uh’, ‘um’, ‘like’)

11. Attitude/Style • Dress appropriately • Be enthusiastic! • Relax • Avoid nervous habits • Give an excuse free presentation • Pixelization • Text too small to read • Videos/link broken • Eliminate technical errors BEFOREHAND!

12. Voice • Speak loudly enough • If using a microphone, adjust voice accordingly • Don’t mumble, enunciate • Avoid monotony • Vary pitch, tone, rhythm • Repeat or pause for emphasis • Don’t read slides or notes word for word • Ask questions of the audience to maintain connectivity (Dr. Qi does this very well)

13. Body Language • Maintain eye contact • Don’t turn your back to the audience • Look at more than one person • Use appropriate hand gestures • Move around? If you are nervous, find a friend in the audience and focus on them!

14. Deferring Questions “What if someone asks a question during the presentation?” • If there is time, answer them directly and move on • Deferring questions • Are you going to address the issue later? • Is answering going to cause your presentation to go over time limits? • Do you have the information available? • If you defer a question, be sure to follow through

15. Answering Questions • Don’t let the audience down • Keep the intensity up • This is where you can go into details • Repeat the question • “What if I don’t know the answer?” • Address the issue directly • Don’t bluff • Answer in part, if possible • Use lack of available data as networking opportunity

16. Presentation Skills Summary • Define your goals for this presentation • Prepare your presentation in advance • Rehearse your presentation • Be enthusiastic • Use slides as reminders, not scripts • Maintain eye contact • Stay on schedule • Answer questions to the best of your ability

17. Overview Suggestions for a Successful Oral Presentation (Public speaking skills) Building Your Technical Presentation (Presentation mechanics)

18. Building Your Technical Presentation • General suggestions for constructing a technical presentation • Defining the structure of your presentation • Specifics on slide construction

19. General Suggestions • Your presentation is a summary of what you have done • KISS • Use high-interest times to communicate important points • Use repetition to enforce key points • Use visual aids to support what you are saying • Allocate time intelligently • Reporter concept • A non-technical reporter with no knowledge of your subject should come away from your presentation and be able to correctly report your key concepts

20. Presentation Structure • Informative, descriptive title • The Introduction • “Tell ‘em what you are going to tell ‘em” • The Body • “Tell ‘em” • The Conclusion • “Tell ‘em what you told ‘em”

21. The Introduction • Tell ‘em what you are going to tell ‘em • Define the problem • Minimize terminology • Use images/examples if possible • Spell out all acronyms • Pique the audience’s interest • Why is the problem important? • What are the applications? • Discuss related work • State the contributions of your work! • Provide an outline of the rest of the presentation

22. The Introduction • Tell ‘em what you are going to tell ‘em • Define the problem • Minimize terminology • Use images/examples if possible • Spell out all acronyms • Pique the audience’s interest • Why is the problem important? • What are the applications? • Discuss related work • State the contributions of your work! • Provide an outline of the rest of the presentation

23. The Outline • Multiple Options • No Outline (Not recommended) • Loose outline (Like this presentation) • Outline page with completion markers (i.e. ‘slide 4 of 14’) • Outline callbacks - Example • Outline tracker built-in to presentation (preferred) • Purpose • Prevents audience from forgetting what you’re talking about • Regains attention of bored audience members • Gives a rough answer to ‘how much longer is this thing?’

24. Will Martin: Image Processing ECE 400 – Senior Design Project • Task 1: Analysis/Selection of Hardware and Software • Task 2: Data Collection and Single Victim Distance/Angle Algorithm Development • Task 3: Write Image Processing Algorithms for Multiple Victims and Obstacles • Task 4: Implementation of Algorithms onto Mobile Robot (Fine Tuning)

25. Task 2: Data Collection and Single Victim Distance/Angle Algorithm Development Outline For Today’s Presentation: Test Image Database Creation Creation of Victim Recognition Algorithm Statistical Analysis Results Future Work/Conclusions

26. Task 2: Data Collection and Single Victim Distance/Angle Algorithm Development A. Test Image Database Creation

27. Task 2: Data Collection and Single Victim Distance/Angle Algorithm Development C. Statistical Analysis

28. Task 2: Data Collection and Single Victim Distance/Angle Algorithm Development Outline For Today’s Presentation: Test Image Database Creation Creation of Victim Recognition Algorithm Statistical Analysis Results Future Work/Conclusions

29. . Task 2: Data Collection and Single Victim Distance/Angle Algorithm Development D. Results • Using the equations derived from the graphs in the previous slides, predictions were made regarding the position of the victim in the frame • It should be noted that the victims that overlapped the frame and the closest victim that suffered from a shadow were not expected to be correctly identified, yet they were.

30. The Outline • Multiple Options • No Outline (Not recommended) • Loose outline (Like this presentation) • Outline page with completion markers (i.e. ‘slide 4 of 14’) • Outline callbacks • Outline tracker built-in to presentation (preferred) - Example • Purpose • Prevents audience from forgetting what you’re talking about • Regains attention of bored audience members • Gives a rough answer to ‘how much longer is this thing?’

31. Outline For Today’s Presentation: • Overview • Flowcharts • Previous Work • Future Work slide from last time • Algorithm Walkthrough • Pose Estimation Algorithm Specifics • Hardware Upgrade • (I,J) to (x,y) Mapping • Determining the Camera’s Distortion Model (Nice Graphs) • Determining the Camera’s dimensions (Nice Graphs) • (I,J) to (x,y) Mapping Equations • Demo/Results • TimingCalculations • Conclusions • Future Work

32. 1. Overview A) B) C) D) 2. Pose Estimation 3. Hardware Upgrade 4. Mapping A) B) C) 5. Demo/Results 6. Timing Calculations 7. Conclusions 8. Future Work

33. Senior Design Projects in Wireless control systems Featuring the work of Taylor Morris and Levi Linwood Nicole Pennington

34. Taylor’s Pan/Tilt System • Goal: • Android-controlled pan tilt camera system • Steps: • Become familiar with Android application programming, Java, and C# • Revise the work of previous senior design students to fit her goal • Design a GUI Taylor Levi

35. Previous Work Bryan Bodkin Trevor Sutch, Shane West Taylor Levi

36. Taylor’s Results • Android displays camera view and sends controls • Uses WiFi/router between the netbook and Android • Netbook controls camera via USB Taylor Levi

37. Levi’s Game Controller Adapter • Goal: • General-purpose adapter for low-cost game controller • Steps/Challenges: • Revise the work of a previous senior design student • Learn about USB address assignment and device configuration • Map the controller inputs and write a driver for the gamepad Taylor Levi

38. Previous Work Adam Smith Taylor Levi

39. Levi’s Results • USB host shield added to Arduino • Removed PC intermediary Taylor Levi

40. The Body • Tell ‘em • Further explanation on the significance of your work • Overview of your methodology • High-level, using images and diagrams where possible • Gloss over the technical details here • Specific problems encountered • Here you can go into more detail • Talk about how you solved the problems • Show examples • This is the portion of your presentation that grows/shrinks due to time considerations

41. The Conclusion • Tell ‘em what you told ‘em • Provide a synopsis • Re-emphasize key points • Lessons learned • Discuss open problems and future work • Thank your audience • Open the floor for questions • More technical details can be discussed here • Have extra slides?

42. Some Comments on Presentation Structure • Emphasize concepts, approaches, methods, and conclusions • Save nitty-gritty technical details for questions or offline discussion • Present material in a logical sequence • Follow one central theme • Limit sidetracks • Use repetition to emphasize key points • Provide appropriate applications for your audience • Tailor your presented results to reflect audience interest

43. More Comments on Presentation Structure • Reveal startling or surprising moments in your research to draw your audience into your presentation • Don’t startle yourself with unexpected content! • During explanation of techniques, use a single data set for demonstration purposes • Once the explanation is complete, show robustness through application to a variety of datasets

44. Slide Design Criteria • Parsimony • Conciseness, simplicity • Say only what is important • Legibility • No excuse for unreadable slides! • Proper color selection • Use charts, diagrams, and images in place of data tables, or large amounts of text • UNITS UNITS UNITS! • Consistency • Use common format for all text, graphics, labels, etc.

45. More on Parsimony • Make sure there is a good reason for every slide • Keep the number of items on a slide small • Don’t waste visual bandwidth • Keep equations and text to a minimum • Avoid intricate and large tables

46. Some Slide Do’s • Use images and diagrams whenever possible • Avoid sequences of equations • Avoid tabulated data • Use repetition

47. Some Slide Do’s • Duplicate slides when necessary • Keep a good balance of slides with text and slides with images • Spell check and proofread • Use formatting and/or color to emphasize key points • Know your audience

48. ? Questions?

49. Spell Check vs. Proofread Eye halve a spelling chequer It came with my pea sea It plainly marques four my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite Its rare lea ever wrong. Eye have run this poem threw it I am shore your pleased two no Its letter perfect awl the weigh My chequer tolled me sew.

50. Some Slide Don’ts • Overload slides • Intend to use too many slides • Put information on slides that you do not intend to discuss • Show complex equations