1. How to Present a Seminar Paper: A Speaker’s Guide
From “How to Present a Technical Paper”
By Dr. Ian Parberry, UNT, Denton
Presentation by
Dr. Ranette Halverson, MSU

2. Presenting a Paper My Pet Peeves
Reading to the audience
Running over the time limit
Slides too small to read
Speaking to the wall
Tracing Code

3. Lengths of Talks Be fully aware of your time limit Conferences
15 – 20 minutes
50 minutes
Classroom
15 – 45 minutes
Allow time for
questions

4. Rules for Presentations
Intro: Tell them what you are going to tell them
Body: Tell them
Conclude: Tell them what you told them

5. Outline of Presentation
Introduction
Body
Technical Issues
Conclusion

6. Introduction Start with anecdote Define the problem/issue
Motivate the audience
Introduce the terminology
Discuss earlier work
Remind, Don’t assume
Provide a road map

7. Body What is happening? What is going to happen?
Social, legal, cultural implications?
At least one set of statistics
Use several pictures/images

8. Technical Issues What is the state of the technology?
What are potential solutions?
The point is to provide a flavor of the technical details

9. Conclusion Briefly review the talk, indicating the important concepts
Hindsight is clearer than foresight
Give open problems
Indicate your talk is over

10. Reaching the Audience Use Repetition Don’t get bogged down in details
Know your audience!!!!
Don’t run over your time limit

11. Power Point Guidelines
NO complete sentences
Do not overload slides
Do not use too many slides
Do use diagrams, tables, pictures
Very little animation – if any
Be very careful with color, fonts
Light background, Dark font REQUIRED

12. Projector Test your slides with a projector
Pale tends to fade out (e.g. yellow on light background)
Keep a high contrast
See how this looks

13. Fonts (44 pt) Arial - 40 point font Times New Roman – 40 point
Arial - 32 point font - bold
Arial - 36 point font
Arial - 40 point font
Times New Roman – 40 point
Verdana -36 point
Georgia – 40 point
Forte – 40 point

14. Animation - Motion Use very judiciously Distracting to audience
Distracts speaker from the talk
Use occasionally for effect

15. Conclusion
Thank you for your attention!
Any questions?
References