Presentation tips

I recently crowd-sourced a list of presentation tips from myself and some pretty smart people in both academia and philanthropy, with the goal of providing guidance to masters students as a key ‘transferable skill’ from our time together.

The presentations I have in mind aren’t necessarily single-paper (or even empirical results) presentations, so this list is slightly different than the good stuff offered up by, e.g., David Ubilava, Rachael Meager, & Jesse Shapiro).

Here’s what we’ve got.

General

• Less is more! The audience can always ask questions and follow-up.
• Keep your audience in mind throughout: it is not actually about you delivering information but, rather, about the audience learning and remembering information, so you need to meet them where they are and bring them along. Consider the WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) of your audience. Good ideas do not sell themselves and you need to respect your audience.
• Aim to have a conversation/dialogue with your audience rather than a lecture/monologue.

Planning a presentation

• Outline your talk before you start making any slides (if you use slides), a la Presentation Zen
• Decide on 3 things (golden rule of 3s) that you hope the audience will remember and do following your presentation. Bucket your content accordingly.
• A presentation is not a murder mystery; don’t bury the lede, start with the conclusions. 
• “Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.” These are your 3 key points!
• If you’re talking about an abstract concept, give a story with a concrete example. It will make sure everybody’s on the same page and people remember stories much better than lone facts or abstract concepts.

Building slides

• Slides allow listeners to follow along with your talk. You’re the star, not the slides. 
• Strive for minimal words (unless you believe the audience will have trouble understanding you given language/accents, in which case, consider a handout as well as more, though still well-curated, words on slides).
• Include an agenda to help everyone follow along. 
• Include sections or another way to track progress, so that your audience doesn’t get lost along the way and to show that you are mindful of their time.
• Include slide numbers to help people reference back if they have questions.
• Aim to have meaningful slide titles (e.g., they convey the main point / topic sentence).
• Keep your font size 18-pt or higher, including for figures!
• For figures, create fresh ones for your slides (not just a screenshot). Use a color scheme that is sufficiently dark and contrasting for the audience to get your key point. Consider red-green color blindness. If your figure has detail that is important, make a hand-out.

Practicing a presentation

• Do it! Practice!
• Consider the listener, hearing the material and seeing the slides for the first time. Does it convey something they have reason to value and does it do so clearly (where clarity is kindness)? You know what you did and why but your audience will not.
• If something is complex, include a pre-read ahead of the presentation.

Delivering a presentation

• Your first job is to inspire confidence. Commit to your role!
• Stay within your time limit without hurrying up (don’t start talking faster than usual) and without skipping slides. Giving a bad talk is better than giving a talk that is too long.
• Signal early on whether and when you are going to pause for clarifying questions; try to allow some pauses for questions but, if they are voluminous, know how to say “hold that thought, we will cover that.” Remember your goal is for them to (understand and) remember your 3 main points, so take more time in dialogue about those.

Any other ideas?