Addressing for Success: Brief Presentation at Scholarly Meetings
There are always lots of complaints about the quality of presentations at meetings. People have to present to get their way paid. They might be looking for jobs, or even want to find someone interested in their work.
1. Practice. Be sure you are taking less than the allotted time. If it is 15 minutes, go for 13. If you go over your alloted time, stop then and there. People will be grateful... See point 4 below. Also, be sure your display or slides or whatever work ahead of time. If they stop working during a talk, don't worry--just keep talking.
2. If your language skills are deficient, use Power Point so that people know what you are saying. Also, have copies of your paper to give to people, and perhaps a one-page summary to give out before you start. PowerPoint is the arsenic of modern academic life, but it is better for people to follow your presentation than not understand it.
If you are shy, get help from therapists. Academic life is rhetorical and performative and combative.
(Ed Tufte has lots of help with making PowerPoint work better. The best way is not to use it.)
3.Talk loud and clear. Face the audience at least some of the time.
4. Give away your main point in the first minute of your presentation. Don't save it for the end. I realize this is controversial, but given what I know of most people's concentration and patience, at least you have their attention in the first minute. Repeat that main point at the end, and maybe even in the middle.
5. If you use charts of numbers etc, be sure people can read the charts, or give people copies on paper. Use color coding on your slide so that people know what to look for. Always indicate uncertainty, whether it statistical or systematic or just plain ignorance--if you have 8 significant figures, I assume that is your bank account or an artifact of your computer program--you usually have about 1 significant figure in planning.
6. Cute titles are disasters. Titles should give away the main point.
7. As for questions: listen carefully, respond the best you can, say that you don't know if you don't know, and suggest you discuss it with the questioner after the session. And then take the questioner to a corner, buy them a snack, and get to know them.
8. If you are writing you paper on the plane or in the hotel room, you are likely to be in trouble. Maybe don't go to the airport at all. The problem here is that your delivery may well reflect your lack of time to practice, and most of us are neither Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, or Budda or Confucius, able to sound wise always. Two days before you leave, practice your talk, at the latest.
In general, well prepared students will outdo their professors, well prepared junior faculty will outdo their senior colleagues. It's no fun to watch people make a mess. More to the point, if you are seeking recognition, a job, or even just scholarly interest, people are ALWAYS watching you. If you give a well prepared talk, everyone will notice and be grateful. You might well survive a poor talk, even get a job, but that is playing the odds that most people cannot afford. If you are the strongest person in your field, people still expect you to show up on time and be well prepared.
Dress neatly. No sneakers, be well groomed, business attire. Freshly showered and toothbrushed. Don't be drunk or drugged-out.
I'm sure there is more, but if you follow the above you won't be a disaster. If your work is average, and most of the work we see is, at least people will think well of you, and even recall your main point.
Someone just wrote me.
May I ask for reflections for discussants at ACSP?
Specifically, I struggle with two approaches, both of which I have tried:
1) Only make brief comments and then open it up to public comments. The rationale: I always write detailed comments and email the authors anyway with those, and therefore this gives more people a chance for questions or comments.
2) Make extended comments based on the probability that I am the only person in the room to have read completely all the papers.
Which do you prefer?
Find out how long you have been allocated for comments, and that will set your agenda. For each paper, figure out the most useful things to make the work better, and say that. I never believe the usual remarks that begin these things about how wonderful the papers are, but... Better to get to your points. Don't ever be cruel or demeaning, or smartass. Graciousness is part of the discussant role.
Also, never advertise your own work, or your best friend's. Rather focus on the work in front of you. After the session offer to take the presenters for coffee and continue the conversation.
In any case, surely take no longer than the time allocated for one paper. People would much prefer to hear your main points in 5 minutes, so that THEY can say what is on their minds.