Giving Effective Presentations
Marie desJardins (mariedj@cs.umbc.edu)
CMSC 691B
February 17, 2004
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October 1999
Sources
 Robert L. Peters, Getting What You Came For: The Smart
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Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or Ph.D. (Revised
Edition). NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.
Justin Zobel, Writing for Computer Science: The Art of Effective
Communication. Singapore: Springer-Verlag, 1997.
Mark D. Hill, “Oral presentation advice”
Simon L. Peyton Jones, John Hughes, and John Launchbury,
“How to give a good research talk”
Patrick Winston, “Some lecturing heuristics”
Dave Patterson, “How to have a bad career in
research/academia”
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Outline
 Rules for presentations
 General guidelines for preparing talks
 Paper presentation guidelines for this class
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Rules for Presentations
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Rule
 Know what on earth you’re doing up there!
 Rule #2: Know what you want to say
 Rule #3: Know your audience
 Rule #4: Know how long you have
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Rule #2: Know What You Want to Say
 Just giving a project summary is not interesting
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to most people
You should give enough detail to get your interesting
ideas
across (and to show that you’ve actually solved the problem),
but not enough to lose your audience
They want to hear what you did that was cool and why they
should care
Preferably, they’ll hear the above two points at the beginning of
the talk, over the course of the talk, and at the end of the talk
If they’re intrigued, they’ll ask questions or read your paper
Whatever you do, don’t just read your slides!
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Rule #3: Know Your Audience
 Don’t waste time on basics if you’re talking to an audience
in your field
 Even for these people, you need to be sure you’re
explaining each new concept clearly
 On the other hand, you’ll lose people in a general
audience if you don’t give the necessary background
 In any case, the most important thing is to emphasize
what you’ve done and why they should care!
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Rule #4: Know How Long You Have
 How long is the talk? Are questions included?
 A good heuristic is 2-3 minutes per slide
 If you have too many slides, you’ll skip some or—
worse—rush desperately to finish. Avoid this temptation!!
 Almost by definition, you never have time to say everything
about your topic, so don’t worry about skipping some
things!
 Unless you’re very experienced giving talks, you should
practice your timing:
A couple of times on your own to get the general flow
 At least one dry run to work out the kinks
 A run-through on your own the night before the talk
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Comments on Zobel / Peters
 Zobel recommends one minute per slide
 Unless you have VERY little information on each slide, this is
a racing speed
 Peters recommends writing out your presentation,
word for word
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This is a very bad idea for most people, and will lead to
extremely stilted delivery
The only alternative, if you’re not an experienced public
speaker, is to PRACTICE
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General Presentation Guidelines
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Organizing a Talk
 Talks are linear:
 Your audience can’t flip back to see what you said last
 They can’t use the section headers as a guideline
 → Help them keep track of where you are in the talk
 → Don’t try to cover as much ground as you would in a
technical paper
 Give an overview (& use it throughout)
 Start with a slide or two on key ideas/contributions
 Give a high-level summary (or simple example)
before you dive down into (not too many) details
 Recap at the end
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Slideology 101
 Don’t just read your slides!
 Use the minimum amount of text necessary
 Use examples
 Use a readable, simple, yet elegant format
 Use color to emphasize important points, but avoid
the excessive use of color
 “Hiding” bullets like this is annoying (but sometimes
effective), but…
Abuse
of
animation
is
a
cardinal
sin!
 Don’t fidget, and…
 Don’t just read your slides!
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How to Give a Bad Talk
Advice from Dave Patterson, summarized by Mark Hill
1. Thou shalt not be neat
2. Thou shalt not waste space
3. Thou shalt not covet brevity
4. Thou shalt cover thy naked slides
5. Thou shalt not write large
6. Thou shalt not use color
7. Thou shalt not illustrate
8. Thou shalt not make eye contact
9. Thou shalt not skip slides in a long talk
10. Thou shalt not practice
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Handling Questions
 Questions during the talk:
 If your presentation will answer the question later, say so
and move on
 If your presentation won’t answer the question, either:
 Give a brief answer
 Defer the question to the end of the talk
 Make sure you understand the question before
answering it
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Ask for clarification if you need it
Restate the question, and ask whether you’ve gotten it right
 Have backup slides for questions you can anticipate
(but don’t have time for in the main presentation)
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Paper Summary Presentations
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Goals of Paper Presentations
 Convey why this is an important and/or interesting
problem
 Review key ideas in the paper
 Convey why this is an important and/or interesting
approach
 Critique the work
 Stimulate discussion
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Paper Summary Presentations
 Content: You should provide a well organized presentation of
the key contributions and important ideas in the paper.
 Timing: You should aim for a ten-minute presentation.
This works out to (roughly) four to six slides – no more!
 As in a real talk, you will get 5-minute, 2-minute, and time’s-up
warnings from the session chair.
 I will cut you off if you go too long!
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 Audience: Your audience consists of computer science
graduate students. (I don’t count.)
Some are in your field, some are not
 Most will not have read the paper (at least not in depth)
 You can’t assume a lot of existing knowledge
 On the other hand, you only have ten minutes! Be selective!
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Summary Presentation Content
 Just as when writing a paper on your own work:
 Describe the problem
 Starting with a simple example can be very helpful
 Explain why it’s important (or at least why they think it’s
important)
 State how the authors solved the problem at an
appropriate level of detail
 Tell what explicit and implicit claims the authors make
 Describe the authors’ experimental and/or analytical
evidence for these claims (and indicate whether you think
the evidence is sufficient to support the claims)
 Stimulate discussion by pointing out interesting aspects of
the approach, flaws, limitations/assumptions, open
questions, ...
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Giving the Presentation
 PowerPoint slides are fine, but not required
 Draft slides can be sent to me* for review, if you
want feedback beforehand
 Feel free to use the whiteboard, especially to work
through an example
 Practice your presentation, even if it’s just to
yourself, to make sure your timing is correct
 As with written summaries, leave out details that
you don’t have time to explain
 Be prepared to fill in the missing details during the
discussion session if you are asked questions!
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* Draft slides must be sent at least 24 hours before yourSeptember1999
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Grading and Feedback
 Students are required to fill out a short feedback form
for each presentation
 You will receive these forms
 I will also give you written feedback
 Your grade will be based on:
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Your level of preparation
The clarity of your presentation
The timing of your presentation
Other students’ evaluation of your presentation
The ensuing discussion
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