MacResearch

Author: Drew McCormack
Company: The Mental Faculty

For the last week I’ve been attending NSConference US. If you’re a Mac or iPhone developer, and didn’t attend, I’m afraid you missed out big time. It was a great conference, with great speakers, and great attendees. In short: great.

This year I was also presenting at the conference. In fact, somehow I was convinced to talk more than anyone else, at least in hourly terms. I think my talks went well. I’m not as funny as the Lee twins — Graham and Mike — nor as experienced as Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch, Aaron Hillegass, or any of the other great speakers who I risk insulting by not naming, but — at the risk of sounding conceited — I like to think I held my own in very esteemed company, and that the audience got something out of my talks.

The first time I had to present anything substantial in public was in my honors year at university. I had to do a 15 minute practice run before my peers for a presentation on my applied math project.

It was one of the worst moments of my life. The information was confusing and convoluted, I was nervous as hell, tripping over words, and running way over time. The lecturer didn’t even have to tell me how bad it was — I already knew.

It was such a shock that I vowed it would never happen again. I went home, rewrote the talk to be simple and more entertaining, and then I practiced it out loud. Four days later, I gave the presentation in front of hundreds of mathematicians, and although it wasn’t the best presentation in the world, the contrast to the original practice run was quite astounding.

At that moment, I realized presenting was a skill like any other, one that you can practice and even perfect. It doesn’t matter if you are naturally shy or not funny, you can still make captivating presentations, and deliver them well, entertaining your audience, and hopefully imparting a bit of knowledge at the same time.

While the experience of NSConference is still fresh in my mind, I thought I would write down the things I have learned over the 15 years or so that I have been writing and delivering presentations (mostly in the scientific realm). In the process of doing so, I have had to analyze what it is that I actually do, because it has become somewhat automatic and instinctive. But it is a skill I have developed, not a natural talent. Every time I have to deliver a presentation, I work quite hard to get it right, and then to practice it. I cannot speak well off-the-cuff — that’s a whole other skill.

1. Practice Makes Perfect

It’s a cliche, but there is nothing truer. Practice, practice, practice. Not in your head, but out loud. It is by far the most important tip in this list.

Don’t just write down your presentation, and wait for the big day; get up in front of a wall, and deliver that sucker, over and over until it flows. You will learn where the difficult parts are, and perhaps rewrite them. You will also learn how long the presentation takes, and can adjust there. But most importantly of all, you will be exercising your vocals.

Most of us rarely speak more than a few sentences at a time in daily life. When you deliver a 60 minute presentation, you have to talk virtually the whole time. I find that in my first practice run, I ‘um’ and ‘ah’ and just can’t find the right words. After 3 or 4 practice runs, things flow, because you know where you are headed, and have had time to find the right wording for each part of the presentation.

2. A Presentation is not a Paper

One of the most common mistakes I see made by young speakers is to simply reproduce a research paper in their presentation. This is a big mistake.

A presentation is not a paper. A presentation is an opportunity to get your message out. Apart from the fact that simply talking your way through a paper in its entirety is extremely dull, it is also pointless, and you have wasted an opportunity. If people want to know every detail of your mathematical proof, they can find it in the paper. You don’t need to reproduce that — you can simply refer to the paper.

Instead, pick out the most important and interesting findings in your research, and present that in an entertaining way. Make your research seem as interesting as it actually is, instead of burying it in countless unimportant details.

Related to this, a very common mistake — particularly in scientific presentations — is to include a Table of Contents at the beginning of a presentation. In a well-structured talk, this is totally unnecessary, and boring to boot. People don’t want to know that you are going to start with an Introduction, then explain the Method, followed by the Results and Conclusions — that’s a high school science lesson. If you feel you must tell people how you are going to structure your talk, just tell them, and don’t include a slide for the purpose.

3. Slides Should be Sparse

Here’s a secret: people don’t read your slides. At least, they won’t read more than a couple of words, so throwing up full sentences on a slide is either going to make a viewer switch off, or — if they are particularly diligent — try to read them all, and completely ignore what you are saying.

Slides should support what you are saying, not be the whole story. Include images and text on slides that emphasize the point you are making, but are not complete in themselves. If someone can look at your slides and get the whole message of your talk, you have failed. Slides on their own should not be sufficient to tell your story. They should only make sense in combination with what you are saying. Lower the information density of your slides, and use spoken word to deliver the lion’s share of the message.

4. Tell a Story

As a rule, people find stories engaging. It’s something that has become engrained in the human physique by eons of evolution. If you can convey at least some of what you have to say in a story format, people will be much more likely to listen, and not turn off.

For example, instead of saying

The result we got was x.

you could say

We started by looking into the squelchy hinkle, but we hit a snag. A little tweak on the hilopmiphore got things going again, and when we saw the first swishlishes we were completely aghast. The result was x.

In short, pretend you’re watching an episode of BBC Horizon. Those guys can make just about anything sound interesting, and they do it by combining each scientific finding with the story behind the discovery.

5. Don’t be the Comedian

Unless you are a naturally funny person, and are confident telling a joke, don’t do it. At least, don’t plan to do it. You might be lucky and say something funny during your presentation, but if you plan a big joke, and it falls flat, your confidence could be completely shot. And what’s more, before you deliver the joke, you will probably be very nervous about it. Leave the jokes to Dave Letterman.

6. Don’t Rush

Don’t overload your presentation with too much information. It is better to leave topics out and present what you do have in a calm and understandable way, than it is to pack in as much as you can and lose your audience along the way.

If after practicing a presentation you find that you are not finishing on time, cut something out. If you don’t, the time shortage will make you nervous, and — if you do go over time — the whole room will be annoyed at you.

7. Use a Look-Ahead Slide

A technique adopted by good speakers everywhere is to use what I’ll call a ‘look-ahead’ slide. The idea is that on the private screen that only you can see, you include the current slide, as well as the next slide that will appear. You can set this up easily in Keynote’s preferences, and I assume Powerpoint has similar functionality.

The reason this works so well is that it makes the transition between slides much smoother. Rather than having to wait for the slide to appear before you formulate what it is you want to say, you can already be saying it as the slide appears. This makes the whole presentation more seamless, and gives the impression that your spoken text is driving the presentation, and the slides are just providing support.

8. Project Your Speech

Talking before an audience is not the same as talking to friends in the cafeteria. You need to be a bit more theatrical with your expression, and project your speech to the room, even if you are wearing a microphone. You don’t need to make a Shakespearian production out of it, but be mindful that you are talking to a large group, and project to the people sitting at the back.

9. Engage the Audience

When delivering a presentation, most of us have the inclination to look at the screen, the computer screen, or even our own feet. While none of these actions are a capital crime, try not to neglect the audience. Make a conscious effort to look into the audience whenever you get the opportunity. Talk to the audience, rather than have them sit there observing you talk to yourself.

10. Deprecate Text

If you’ve ever seen a Steve Jobs keynote, you know you should not overuse text in your slides. Rather than writing your whole presentation out as a series of long sentences, use very short bullet points, and only when you really want to emphasize something.

At other times, use slide images, together with spoken word, to tell your story. The images do not even have to be directly or literally related to what you are talking about. Sometimes amusing images which emphasize something you are saying work the best.

Images can even be included in short slideshows that flow past in the background as you talk, without you making any direct reference to them. In this role they are simply enhancing your speech, and do not require deep consideration.

You can also use video in your presentations, but it usually requires the audience’s complete attention. Either stop talking and watch the video with the audience, or narrate it, depending on the content.

If you are unsure where to find images for your presentation, I recommend the relatively new Mac app Viewfinder. It allows you to easily search the photo site Flickr, and stipulate the licensing conditions which you are prepared to accept.