How to Give a Talk

1. How to Give a Talk Not ^ By Ogram Fizzy-Water On December 4, 2008 In CS265

2. Do not put Titles oN your sliDes • Use unreadable FoNTs • uSE unREADable Colors • Use REEAALLY interESTING capitalization • .*&) And P!unct$ation too • You’re SMarT soo no spel-chekING for U!

3. Consistency is the HobGoblin of Little Minds • Keep them guessing, change everything! • Fonts • Backgrounds • Colors • Random animation is good too! • And under no circumstances should you actually tell the audience what your talk is going to be about.

4. In particular • Avoid outline slides – they don’t really contain content. • And make sure that only the smart people get the message of your talk; don’t make it too obvious for them to figure out your key message. • A good talk should be like a good mystery.

5. Outline • You, the speaker • Structure of a talk • Visual Aids • Miscellania

6. You, The Speaker - Preparation • Wing it: no use thinking about what you’re going to say ahead of time; you’ll have your visual aids to help you. • Whatever you do, do not practice your talk! • Don’t check out the room in advance; surprises are good! • Don’t worry, they are sure to have whatever projection device you need.

7. You, The Speaker - Dress • Your clothes make a statement, make it a good one. • Wear really outlandish clothing so that your audience remembers your clothing and not anything you say. • Make sure your clothing is dirty. • And under-dress for the occasion; you wouldn’t want the audience to think that you think they are special.

8. You, The Speaker - Speaking • Talk really, really fast so that you can cover as much ground as possible. • Then talk really, really slow so that your audience is tempted to leap out of their chairs and rip the words from your mouth. • Mumble. • End each statement by raising the pitch of your voice. • Yell for emphasis.

9. You, The Speaker – Cheat Sheets • You really shouldn’t need any notes other than what’s on your slides; after all, you are the expert. • If you do have notes, put them on tiny slips of paper that can get easily lost and that will be difficult to read while you’re standing in front of the room (you don’t want to make it too easy). • Be really embarrassed that you have notes; else they audience might think you care what they think.

10. You, The Speaker - Attitude • Don’t make eye contact with your audience. • Be tentative; you don’t want the audience to actually believe anything that you say. • Ignore questions from the audience; they came to hear you speak, not themselves. • Make sure that you make anyone asking a question look like an idiot. You’re the smart one in the room. • Tell off-color jokes.

11. You, The Speaker - Timing • Don’t worry about how long your time slot is; take as long as you need. • Don’t worry if you have 97 slides for a 15 minute presentation; there isn’t a fixed ratio of how long it takes to cover a slide. • Don’t leave time for questions; after all what possible questions could the audience have.

12. You, The Speaker - Questions • Cut off the questioner and begin answering; if you’re lucky, you’ll answer the wrong question. • Make sure to point out when someone asks you a stupid question. • Drag out your answers as long as possible so you can show the audience how smart you are. • By all means, don’t give credit to anyone else’s work, especially when it’s relevant.

13. You, The Speaker – Self Regulation • Everyone else in the world has nervous habits, but not you. • Anyway, it’s OK if you: • Jingle your keys • Play with the marker • Throw things at your audience • Play with your hair • Bite your nails • Pick your nose

14. Outline • You, the speaker • Structure of a talk • Visual Aids • Miscellania

15. Talk Structure - Introduction • Who needs an introduction? • The audience ought to be able to figure out your goals from the title, right? • And heaven forbid you waste precious time explaining why what you’ve done is interesting. • And if they don’t have the background to understand the rest of the talk, whose problem is that anyway?

16. Talk Structure – Problem Statement • Once you’ve supplied the background, there is no need to explicitly state the problem you are solving. • After all, you figured out the right problem to tackle (after many months), why shouldn’t the audience? • Don’t waste valuable time getting the audience to understand where you are going (otherwise it’s too hard to surprise them later on).

17. Talk Structure – The Approach • You really want to get to the results, so don’t bother telling them how you are tackling the problem. • Let them figure it out as you overwhelm them with your results. • Don’t tell them what obstacles you overcame in arriving at your approach. • Under no circumstances should you explain that there were alternatives that you discarded, after all, you discarded them, right?

18. Talk Structure - Results • Skip the experimental setup; it doesn’t matter. • Throw graphs at the audience without explaining the experiment that you ran. • Never tell them what results you expected (especially if your results differ from the intuition; you don’t want them to think you’re stupid). • If the results don’t support your claims, lie about them. • Never show a negative result; spin negative results to look positive.

19. Talk Structure - Results • Above all, never, ever, ever explain why the results are as they are. That’s the hard part and you wouldn’t want to let just anybody know now would you?

20. Talk Structure – Conclusion • Who needs one? • You’ve told them once, why tell them again? • Don’t repeat the main hypothesis of the talk; they should have gotten that first time around. • Do not summarize your results, you’re simply insulting the audience’s intelligence.

21. Talk Structure - Conclusion • Never reveal any shortcomings of the current work. • Similarly, your work is so perfect that there cannot possibly be any future work, so don’t waste your time. • And you’ve told them the important stuff once, just don’t be tempted to do it again!

22. Talk Structure – Wrapping it Up • You’ll notice that most of the traditional parts of a talk are superfluous. • This is great! • You can jump right into incomprehensible graphs and results. • Weave irrelevant stories and anecdotes into the talk. • Don’t forget to spend a lot of time telling them why you were up until 4:00 AM finishing the talk.

23. Outline • You, the speaker • Structure of a talk • Visual Aids • Miscellania

24. Visual Aids - Religion • People will get religious about the right way to use visual aids. • Since there is no right answer, then there can’t possibly be any guidelines to follow. • So, you can ignore all the conventional wisdom and do whatever you want. • Yee hah!

25. Visual Aids - Tools • It’s really important to use a tool with which you’re completely unfamiliar. • After all, the tool is what’s important, not how the slides look and function. • And speaking of which, you must, of course, have prepared slides. I mean, you can’t expect to give a talk without any visual aids can you?

26. Visual Aids - Purpose • The visual aids give your talk for you. • You should simply be able to read off the slides and not have to add anything. • People really like it when the speaking and the visual aids are identical. • In fact, the best talk is one where you say nothing and simply show people your slides. • Make sure your titles don’t help them too much!

27. Visual Aids - Style • It’s really important to cram as much information as possible onto your slides, so you’ll want to forego any formatting and simply cut and paste paragraphs from your paper. After all, they are really here to hear about the paper, so what visual aid could be better than the paper itself. In fact, a really good way to give a talk is to simply stand up in front of the room and read your paper. That’s not a speech that you’ve written about the paper, it’s the paper itself. That way you know that the audience is actually going to read your work because by golly, you’re going to put it right up there where they can easily read it. And if you’re lucky, you can cram in some totally realted stuff, without citation, and you’ll really convince your audience that you know what you’re doing. • Violate the three cardinal rules • To violate any of the three cardinal rules of giving a good scientific talk is to court disaster and to risk being consigned to immediate oblivion by your audience! But if ignominy is your goal, then I recommend that you: • Exceed the allotted time • Never practise beforehand • Never be prepared for a total failure of modern technology • Just as successful or memorable oral scientific presentations are practised beforehand, disastrous talks are almost never practised prior to their delivery. This is surely the strongest correlation of all. The reason that the quality of oral presentations (inevitably in English) at international meetings is higher by Europeans than by North Americans in my view is evidence that practising one's talk is the surest way of enhancing its quality and ensuring its successful reception. • If a talk has never been practised, the odds of exceeding one's allotted time increase dramatically, and nothing annoys an audience more than a speaker who goes overtime. This is the one "capital crime" of scientific presentations. Neophytes to the subject and experts alike ignore almost everything presented during "overtime," and the longer one proceeds, the more ill will one generates. • The third point may not be as common as the first two, but there are rare occasions when speakers are only prepared to deliver a talk in one format; e.g., PowerPoint, and are totally incapacitated when there is a failure of modern technology, e.g., the projector isn't delivered on time, or your laptop isn't quite compatible with the projector, or... • Put another way, if you forget that an oral presentation is really a reflection of you, then you are almost certainly doomed to give an inferior talk.

28. Visual Aids - Style • Just • One • Word

29. Visual Aids – the Black Board • If you like to cover yourself with chalk, then the blackboard may be your chosen visual aid medium. • People usually like watching your back while you write long, detailed notes on the board. • Don’t talk while you write, it might distract the audience. • Face the board for long periods of time, so the audience doesn’t get bored looking at your face.

30. Visual Aids - Overheads • Transparencies are another popular visual aid. • Make sure that yours curl up so that the view the audience sees is distorted. • Don’t focus the projector; it makes reading the slides too easy. • If you write on your slides, make sure it’s unintelligible. • By the time you change slides, it’s good if the audience can’t see any of the initial content.

31. Visual Aids - Overheads • Don’t leave slides up there too long; change to next slide before the audience can read them. • Use lots of overlays and make sure they don’t quite line up; it gives the audience something to think about. • Drop your entire set of transparencies on the floor and spend at least ten minutes picking them up.

32. Visual Aids - Powerpoint • Powerpoint has lots of nifty features; make sure you use them all. • Animation is a great tool; use it a lot. • Make sure that you use features that only work on a machine other than the one on which you’ll be giving the talk; it’s always fun to talk negatively about a company whose tools you use. • Don’t reboot your computer shortly before your talk, since it reduces the likelihood of unexpected computer glitches.

33. Visual Aids - Powerpoint • Make sure to leave your network and IM on. You want the audience to see the messages you receive. • Use annoying sounds in your presentation.

34. Visual Aids - Graphs • My favorites! • Use lots of color and lots of lines and lots of labels (that way no one can really see your data). • If the graphs don’t look good, make up some data. • Make your graphs as deceptive as possible.

35. Visual Aids - Graphs

36. Visual Aids - Graphs

37. Visual Aids - Graphs

38. Visual Aids - Graphs

39. Visual Aids - Graphs • Don’t Explain the graph at all. • Don’t tell the audience whether bigger numbers are better or worse. • Don’t tell the audience what the axes are. • And definitely don’t tell the audience what to take away from the data.

40. Visual Aids - Tables • Tables are another great way to present lots of data.

41. Visual Aids - Tables • The more data the better! • Don’t highlight any important values, because then your audience may not look at the other numbers. • Be sure not to tell them trivial details like what the numbers represent and what the units are.

42. Visual Aids - Pictures • Pictures are worth thousands of words • Use them all over the place.

43. Visual Aids - Pictures • Make sure the picture aren’t too relevant. • The goal of pictures is to distract the reader. • Abstract art is always nice. • Pictures of people that have nothing to do with the presentation also add a nice touch.

44. Outline • You, the speaker • Structure of a talk • Visual Aids • Miscellania

45. Conclusions • I didn’t really have anything to say here, but it’s important to include parts of the talk that are vapid anyway. • You can always use fancy fonts to convince the listener that there is something worthwhile here. • And, don’t use your conclusion to be repetitive; if they didn’t catch things the first time, they don’t deserve to hear them.