Tips for Giving a Good Talk CS 190 Winter 2002 Dr Eamonn Keogh Computer Science & Engineering Department University of California - Riverside Riverside,CA Modified from the notes of Edward R. Tufte, Craig S. Kaplan, Eamonn Keogh and others

Outline The CS 179 presentation Why CS 179 students must give a presentation What your presentation should be about Advice on giving talks General advice Organization Making clear overheads Avoiding common pitfallsConclusion

Why CS 179 students must give a presentation As a practical matter, I can’t spend more than two hours grading each project. This is an opportunity for you to draw attention to the high quality of your work You can learn from your fellow students (you will still have some days to polish your work!) Giving clear presentations is part of the design process!

What your presentation should be about Since we have very limited time slots, I recommend you focus on one aspect of your work. For example… Generating realistic random spatial queries for testing Rtrees Elicitation by interviewing, our questionnaire based approach Documenting code with the XYZ tool, some lessons learned

Show up early. You may have a chance to head off some technical or ergonomic problem Have a backup plan. If your lecture is based on a PowerPoint presentation, have overhead backups of each page Check out the room ahead of time. Before your talk, check out the room, and make sure it has everything you need Never apologize. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the issues for which you’re apologizing—and it just sounds lame Invest in a laser pointer. They are inexpensive, and are extremely useful Rehearse timing. This is the most common sin

Overheads I Use large fonts. On your Power Point presentation, use the biggest fonts realistically possible. Small fonts are hard to read Use highly contrasting colors. Avoid busy backgrounds. Keep the background simple. Too much in the background makes the text hard to read. Avoid using red text. Red text is often hard to read. AVOID ALL CAPS! All caps look like you're shouting. Include a good combination of words, pictures, and graphics. A variety keeps the presentation interesting.

Overheads II Be terse The sales forecasts show an increase on the horizon. Sales heading up Use bullets or numbered items appropriately Test your overheads days before your talk! Goals Ease of use Reusability Reliability Outline of our method 1.Design 2.Implementation 3.Testing

Overheads III Begin with an introduction slide (Who you are, why you are giving a talk, the title of the talk) Next, give an outline (“roadmap”). For such a short talk, you might want to combine this with the above State your point (one simple slide) Demonstrate your point (a few slides) Review your point (one simple slide) End with a slide that reviews the entire talk We introduced the TSP problem We explained why it is an important problem We explained why it is a hard problem We introduced a new heuristic to solve TSP We empirically demonstrated the utility of our approach

Annoying Personal Habits (This means you) Playing with jewelry Licking and/or biting your lips Constantly adjusting your glasses Popping the top of a pen Playing with facial hair (men) Playing with/twirling your hair (women) Jingling change in your pocket Leaning against anything for support Fillers: “ah”, “um”, and “and” Starting every sentence with the same word Sticky floor syndrome Avoiding eye contact Lack of enthusiasm

Conclusions We have explained why CS 179 students must give a talk We have motivated the need for a high quality talk We have seen various tips on creating high quality overheads We have seen various hints on avoiding common pitfalls Questions?