How to Present a
Seminar Paper:
A Speaker’s Guide
From “How to Present a Technical Paper”
By Dr. Ian Parberry, UNT, Denton
Presentation by
Dr. Ranette Halverson, MSU
Presenting a Paper
My Pet Peeves
 Reading to the audience
 Running over the time limit
 Slides too small to read
 Speaking to the wall
 Tracing Code
Lengths of Talks
 Be fully aware of your time limit
 Conferences
– 20 minutes
 50 minutes
 15
 Classroom
 15
– 45 minutes
 Allow time for
questions
Rules for Presentations
Intro: Tell them what you
are going to tell them
Body: Tell them
Conclude: Tell them what
you told them
Outline of Presentation
Introduction
Body
Technical Issues
Conclusion
Introduction
 Start with anecdote
 Define the problem/issue
 Motivate the audience
 Introduce the terminology
 Discuss earlier work
 Remind, Don’t assume
 Provide a road map
Body
 What is happening?
 What is going to happen?
 Social, legal, cultural
implications?
 At least one set of statistics
 Use several pictures/images
Technical Issues
 What is the state of the
technology?
 What are potential solutions?
 The point is to provide a flavor of
the technical details
Conclusion
 Briefly review the talk, indicating
the important concepts
 Hindsight is clearer than
foresight
 Give open problems
 Indicate your talk is over
Reaching the Audience
 Use Repetition
 Don’t get bogged down in
details
 Know your audience!!!!
 Don’t run over your time limit
Power Point Guidelines
 NO complete sentences
 Do not overload slides
 Do not use too many slides
 Do use diagrams, tables, pictures
 Very little animation – if any
 Be very careful with color, fonts
 Light
background, Dark font REQUIRED
Projector
 Test your slides with a projector
 Pale tends to fade out (e.g.
yellow on light background)
 Keep a high contrast
 See how this looks
 See how this looks
Fonts (44 pt)
 Arial - 32 point font - bold
 Arial - 36 point font
 Arial - 40 point font
 Times New Roman – 40 point
 Verdana -36 point
 Georgia – 40 point
 Forte – 40 point
Animation - Motion
 Use very judiciously
 Distracting to audience
 Distracts speaker from the talk
 Use occasionally for effect
Conclusion
 Thank you for
your attention!
 Any questions?
 References