Presentation tips

Your presentations are probably going to take the form of slide decks. (I am happy to entertain suggestions for other formats, however.)

General tips:

• In some fields, a conference presentation consists of the presenter reading their paper verbatim. Our field is not one of those fields. (Which isn’t to say that paper presentations can’t be riveting in their own right!)
• Your research paper is where you need to be methodical and thorough. The presentation is an opportunity to take the material from your paper and turn it into a story. You don’t have to include everything in your paper in the presentation, nor does your presentation need to be made up solely from content from your paper.
• Be concrete. An single example is worth ten minutes of explanation.
• Be specific, technical, obsessive. The temptation is to elide technical details in an effort to not bore the audience. But most of what makes your projects interesting in the first place are those tiny, technical, obsessive decisions. In my experience, the best presentations are those in which the presenter takes care to lead the audience by the hand into the nitty gritty specifics.
• Presentations don’t have to be emotional or inspirational. They can be, if you want them to. But it’s also enough to let the work speak for itself.
• Don’t read off your slides. But I find it helpful to have prewritten text in my presenter’s notes, just so I have something to look at and read if I find myself getting lost. For shorter or timed talks, it can be helpful to write a full script.
• Rehearse. Rehearse so much.

Some ideas for project organization. This isn’t hard and fast! It’s just meant to help you get started.

• Title slide
  • Always include your name. This is incredibly important. Your presentation may be seen by people who don’t know you, and they need your name if they’re going to get in touch with you later. It is surprising to me how many people forget this step.
• Show what you made
  • Resist the urge to start at the beginning of your project’s “story.” The first thing in the body of your presentation should be a description of what you made, along with some kind of visual documentation so that people understand what you’re talking about for the rest of the presentation.
• Context and significance
  • Put your project into context, both in relation to your own practice and to the fields you understand your project to be in relationship to.
  • This is where you can briefly indulge your desire to say stuff like “ever since I was a kid, I’ve been interested in…”
  • Show related projects from other people, but be careful to help people understand that you didn’t make the things you’re showing as references.
  • Be concise. Don’t recite your life story, or your annotated bibliography. Just point to the context that you think will help people understand the rest of the presentation.
• Show what your project does and how it works
  • Visual documentation (especially video) is helpful here. This is a great place for showing user tests, mockups, demos, etc.
• Methodology
  • What was interesting about how you made the project? What interesting or counterintuitive decisions did you make? Show rough drafts, abandoned prototypes, sketches, etc.
• Evaluation/reflection
  • How do you know that your project worked?
  • What are the next steps?
• Acknowledgements
  • Give credit where it’s due. List people that helped, projects that inspired you, tools that were invaluable, etc.
• Contact information
  • I think it’s helpful to put contact information on your last slide, so that people know how to reach out to you.