1. Hints for Giving Presentations (A) Anatomy of a Talk
PhD Seminar
Hints for Giving Presentations (A)
Anatomy of a Talk
Jeff Offutt

2. Always Start a Talk With Something the Audience Already Knows
A good talk will have
Introduction that begins by restating something the audience already knows
Presents new material in increasing levels of difficulty
Closes by relating each level to the previous level
Concludes by relating the entire talk to something the audience knew ahead of time
© Jeff Offutt

3. Generic Outline – 4 Levels
Entire Audience
Entire Audience
Intro
Conclusions
General Knowledge
General Knowledge
Context &
Overview
Results &
Discussion
Deep Knowledge
Deep Knowledge
Deep
Weeds
Specialists
© Jeff Offutt

4. Introduction Introduce characters: Motivate your work
What is your problem ?
Why is it interesting, important and exciting ?
What is its context : How is it different from other research ?
Give a teaser for your results — why should we listen to the rest of the talk?
Don’t need a full outline, but let audience know enough so they want to listen to the rest
Summarize surprising results early
© Jeff Offutt

5. Guts of the Talk Explain what you did Convey one technical nugget
Don’t be comprehensive — convey the big picture
Use pictures, 1-2 examples, etc.
Convey one technical nugget
Show one neat concrete thing that came out of your work
Analysis
Did your work solve the problem ?
What are the important broad implications of your work ?
© Jeff Offutt

6. Conclusions Summarize your project with one or two key points
If your audience remembers one thing from your talk, you have succeeded
Again, this is different from a classroom lecture
If they remember two things, you’re doing really well
© Jeff Offutt

7. Some Specific Advice Average 2 minutes per slide
Think carefully about the audience and what they know
You have to do this before your talk
Use pictures
Put at most five major bullets on your slides
Slides for a classroom lecture usually have a lot more information — they are also used for reference
People should be able to read slides quickly — and then listen to you
© Jeff Offutt

8. Can You Do This in 20 Minutes?
Advertisers pay $2.5M for 30 seconds during Superbowl – they must be pretty sure they can tell a compelling story in that time
A Big Bang episode is 22 minutes long
Make your points directly, avoid unnecessary details
Organize your presentation
Practice!
Without an audience
In front of your project group members
In front of friends not familiar with your project
© Jeff Offutt

9. Next we’ll talk about habits
Summary
Those are the basics
Next we’ll talk about habits
during presentations