How To Give a Good Talk Last Revised on Sue Moon Professor Computer Science Department

Why Is It Important? A Good Talk Is  Highly effective means of one-to-many communication Vicious Cycle  Good speaker More invitations, more talks, better speeches  Bad speaker If you’re a student : no job interviews If you have a job: lose popularity, get fewer invitations, disappears into oblivion 2

Know Your Audience Who are they? What do they want from your talk?  Their technical background determines: Academic info vs industry overview Technical details vs opinions 3

At the Podium Always face the audience Have eye contact with audience  Don’t show the back of your head to audience  Have your computer monitor right in front of you Look relaxed  Check your idiosyncratic gestures Swinging, hands in pockets, on waist, or in the back Use moderate amount of gestures  Keep audience alert  Use a laser pointer only when necessary 4

Your Title Slide It should be informative  Talk title  Location and Time  Your work or someone else’s?  Collaborators? Any title page should be as informative 5

Your Slides Be succinct and descriptive  Avoid full sentences  Do not list only nouns; use action verbs to be descriptive Use a small # of colors  Too many colors distract audience from main focus Use big fonts  Readable without restraining  Limit # of lines per slide 6

Graphs, Tables, and Equations Use as few tables and equations as possible  Tables are hard to read  Equations are hard to follow Use as many graphs as possible  Graphs are easy to read and remember Graphs  Make legends and axis labels big enough Use animation and figures when possible  In RGB colors; pastel colors don’t always work due to lighting 7

Time Your Talk Allocate 1 ~ 3 minutes per slide  Every slide counts and takes up time  15 slides for 20 min talk  30~35 slides for 40 min talk  100+ slides for 1hr-long talk => horrible Prepare transitional comments between slides  Keep audience involved Plan time for intro & motivation  For talks shorter than 30 minutes, make sure you spend 1/3 of time on intro & motivation 8

Prepare Answers to Likely Questions Ask yourself 3~5 most likely questions  Prepare backup slides for those questions If asked an unexpected question  And if you don’t have an answer  Acknowledge you haven’t thought about it and thank the person 9

Appendix A: Guideline for Your 1 st Public Talk

For First-Time Non-Native Speakers [Dry Run #0]  Practise run by yourself as minimum courtesy to your fellow dry-run attendees [Dry Run #1]  Have the complete set of slides ready  Expect lots of structural changes  Write down a script for the first 5 pages ** Most pointed-out weaknesses **  “You don’t explain why you’re showing me the slide”  “You don’t explain what lesson to take from the slide”  and “So 11

For First-Time Non-Native Speakers [Dry Run #2]  Incorporate all the comments  Record your talk and see it for yourself Physical peculiarities: body swinging, showing the back of your head to the audience, hands in pockets, hands on your waist, … Others: frequent coughing [Dry Run #3]  See if you can replace tables with animations  See if you explain any part better with animations  Write down a script for the complete talk [Dry Run #4]  See if you can escape from the typical “monotonous” speech  Final check on all the points above  Do you deliver your enthusiasm about your work? 12

You Shall Not Get Onboard Before You Have Not Done Four Dry Runs “You SHALL NOT register before a decent dry run” – Sue Moon

At the Conference [Dry Run #5]  Upon arrival in the hotel room by yourself [Dry Run #6]  The day before the real talk  By yourself or in front of whoever you can entice 14

You’re not the only one Stefan Savage practiced his 1 st SOSP talk 5 times Zhi-Li Zhang did more than 7 dry runs of his job talk Stefan and Zhi-Li both recorded and watched their talks Jeff Mogul still practises his talk whenever possible 15

Appendix B: Non-Native Speaker’s Disadvantage

How Harder Do You Have to Work? IMHO, at least 30%  In paper writing and presentation If you have to work harder than 30%  Either you’re not ready for PhD  Or study English intensively for 6 months Take a leave of absence!!! How to bridge the 30% gap?  So much an advisor can do  Start now and invest time for your future 17

Appendix C: Bad Talks

Opinions about Bad Talk Too many bad talks in local workshops/confs  Slides full of diagrams and words  Graphs w/o proper accreditation  No distinction of originality from related work  No transition between slides  No “why” and “so what”  No respect for time limit  More of a propaganda than a research talk More “We should” than “we have done” Don’t turn into yet another one of them 19

Appendix D: Tips from Fellow Students

장 건의 경험담 0) slide 에 알아야 할 내용 다 적고, 다양한 animation 을 통해 혹시 발음을 못알아 듣더라도 따라갈 수 있도록. 1) full script 를 준비 2) 첫 10 페이지 정도 완벽하게 외우기 ( 실험 결과들 전까지 ) - 사실 영어가 잘되면 이야기할 내용들만 정확하게 다 외워도 되겠지만, non-native speaker 입장에서 한번 당황하기 시작하면 겉잡을 수 없으므로 거의 다 외우다시피 하는게 좋은거 같아요. 결과들은 그래도 설명하기가 쉬운거 같은 데, 그래프 설명하는거는 생각보다 어렵습니다.--; 그래프도 어떻게 말할찌 꼼꼼하게 준비하고 axis 설명 다 하고 해야 합니다. 3) 파워포인트에 녹음 기능 사용해서 들어보기 ( 들어보면 엄청난 konglish 에 압박 이.) ( 시간도 재줘서 좋습니다.) 4) dry-run 은 위에께 준비된 상태로 3 번정도 ? 5) 만약을 대비한 각 페이지별 얘기할 내용들에 대한 cheat sheet 6) 강조할 부분 ( 강조해서 말할 부분 ) 미리 찾아서 연습 ! 7) 예상 질문과 대답 0,5,6,7 은 dry-run 을 하면서 많이 comment 를 받을 수 있으리라고 보입니다. 그 외에 어려운 단어를 되도록 발음하기 좋은 단어로 바꾸는것도 한가지 방법인 거 같습니다. 21