Years ago at the first conference in which I presented, I was was scheduled to go in the first panel. While this was nerve-racking, it did free me to relax and enjoy the rest of the conference. At this conference, I am scheduled to present on the last day, in the last session. While on the one hand this is extending the nervousness, I also have an opportunity to see a lot of other's presentations while thinking about how to refine my own. And here's what I've discovered. When thinking about your presentation it is important to:
1. keep it simple. Case in point, the graph I snuck a photo of. This was not the most complex of this presenter's slides, but he was too quick for me to snap a shot of the busiest slide. This was exacerbated by him not explaining these graphs and after a few, I just sort of stopped trying to read all the little red text on black.
2. stay on topic. If you show me images or video, talk about those images and video. If you seem to be talking on a completely different subject than your visual aids, and don't offer any way of telling us how they are connected, I am just going to tune out and just focus one or the other.
3. practice. Each session is two hours long and has about 4-5 presenters. So that's about 15-20 minutes per person. So practice what you are going to say ahead of time. With a watch. See how long it takes you. Many presenters went well over their alloted time with the clever strategy of looking down at their paper or focusing on the screen to avoid the time monitor's indicators of just a few minutes remaining. Not only will practice help you to know how long to talk, it will also help you to be less nervous and appear more organized - this will also save you time.
I've heard a lot of interesting concepts, theories and work in this conference so far. But very often I was distracted to the point that I almost missed it. And while I'm nervous to go last, after another day and a half of these presentations, hopefully I can refine my own presentation learning from what does and doesn't work in the others.
Overall, this is a really great conference. (And tonight I have my first real British pub experience!)
This raises some excellent points.
ReplyDeleteVery often academics stress the research to the neglect of considering how their efforts might best be presented to an audience.
Never go over time!
ReplyDeleteI once had a mentor who was convinced that for every minute you went over you lost 5% of the favourable impression made during the allotted time.