How To Give a Good Talk
Last Revised on 2012.4.5.
Sue Moon
Professor
Computer Science Department
Why Is It Important?

A Good Talk Is
 Highly effective means of one-to-many communication

Vicious Cycle
 Good speaker
More invitations, more talks, better speeches
 Bad speaker
If you’re a student : no job interviews
If you have a job: lose popularity, get fewer invitations,
disappears into oblivion
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Know Your Audience
Who are they?
 What do they want from your talk?

 Their technical background determines:
Academic info vs industry overview
Technical details vs opinions
3
At the Podium
Always face the audience
 Have eye contact with audience

 Don’t show the back of your head to audience
 Have your computer monitor right in front of you

Look relaxed
 Check your idiosyncratic gestures
Swinging, hands in pockets, on waist, or in the back

Use moderate amount of gestures
 Keep audience alert
 Use a laser pointer only when necessary
4
Your Title Slide

It should be informative
 Talk title
 Location and Time
 Your work or someone else’s?
 Collaborators?

Any title page should be as informative
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Your Slides

Be succinct and descriptive
 Avoid full sentences
 Do not list only nouns; use action verbs to be descriptive

Use a small # of colors
 Too many colors distract audience from main focus

Use big fonts
 Readable without restraining
 Limit # of lines per slide
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Graphs, Tables, and Equations

Use as few tables and equations as possible
 Tables are hard to read
 Equations are hard to follow

Use as many graphs as possible
 Graphs are easy to read and remember

Graphs
 Make legends and axis labels big enough

Use animation and figures when possible
 In RGB colors; pastel colors don’t always work due to
lighting
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Time Your Talk

Allocate 1 ~ 3 minutes per slide
 Every slide counts and takes up time
 15 slides for 20 min talk
 30~35 slides for 40 min talk
 100+ slides for 1hr-long talk => horrible

Prepare transitional comments between slides
 Keep audience involved

Plan time for intro & motivation
 For talks shorter than 30 minutes, make sure you spend
1/3 of time on intro & motivation
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Prepare Answers to Likely Questions

Ask yourself 3~5 most likely questions
 Prepare backup slides for those questions

If asked an unexpected question
 And if you don’t have an answer
Acknowledge you haven’t thought about it and thank the
person
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Appendix A:
Guideline for Your 1st Public Talk
For First-Time Non-Native Speakers
[Dry Run #0]

Practise run by yourself as minimum courtesy to your
fellow dry-run attendees
[Dry Run #1]



Have the complete set of slides ready
Expect lots of structural changes
Write down a script for the first 5 pages
** Most pointed-out weaknesses **



“You don’t explain why you’re showing me the slide”
“You don’t explain what lesson to take from the slide”
“Why” @beginning and “So What?” @end
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For First-Time Non-Native Speakers
[Dry Run #2]


Incorporate all the comments
Record your talk and see it for yourself
Physical peculiarities: body swinging, showing the back of your head to
the audience, hands in pockets, hands on your waist, …
Others: frequent coughing
[Dry Run #3]



See if you can replace tables with animations
See if you explain any part better with animations
Write down a script for the complete talk
[Dry Run #4]



See if you can escape from the typical “monotonous” speech
Final check on all the points above
Do you deliver your enthusiasm about your work?
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You Shall Not Get Onboard
Before You Have Not Done
Four Dry Runs
“You SHALL NOT register before a
decent dry run” – Sue Moon
At the Conference
[Dry Run #5]

Upon arrival in the hotel room by yourself
[Dry Run #6]


The day before the real talk
By yourself or in front of whoever you can entice
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You’re not the only one
Stefan Savage practiced his 1st SOSP talk 5 times
 Zhi-Li Zhang did more than 7 dry runs of his job talk
 Stefan and Zhi-Li both recorded and watched their
talks
 Jeff Mogul still practises his talk whenever possible

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Appendix B:
Non-Native Speaker’s
Disadvantage
How Harder Do You Have to Work?

IMHO, at least 30%
 In paper writing and presentation

If you have to work harder than 30%
 Either you’re not ready for PhD
 Or study English intensively for 6 months
Take a leave of absence!!!

How to bridge the 30% gap?
 So much an advisor can do
 Start now and invest time for your future
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Appendix C:
Bad Talks
Opinions about Bad Talk

Too many bad talks in local workshops/confs
 Slides full of diagrams and words
 Graphs w/o proper accreditation
 No distinction of originality from related work
 No transition between slides
 No “why” and “so what”
 No respect for time limit
 More of a propaganda than a research talk
More “We should” than “we have done”

Don’t turn into yet another one of them
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Appendix D:
Tips from Fellow Students
장 건의 경험담

0) slide에 알아야 할 내용 다 적고, 다양한 animation을 통해 혹시 발음을 못알아
듣더라도 따라갈 수 있도록.
1) full script를 준비
2) 첫 10페이지 정도 완벽하게 외우기(실험 결과들 전까지)
- 사실 영어가 잘되면 이야기할 내용들만 정확하게 다 외워도 되겠지만,
non-native speaker입장에서 한번 당황하기 시작하면 겉잡을 수 없으므로 거의
다 외우다시피 하는게 좋은거 같아요. 결과들은 그래도 설명하기가 쉬운거 같은
데, 그래프 설명하는거는 생각보다 어렵습니다.--;
그래프도 어떻게 말할찌 꼼꼼하게 준비하고 axis설명 다 하고 해야 합니다.
3) 파워포인트에 녹음 기능 사용해서 들어보기(들어보면 엄청난 konglish에 압박
이.) (시간도 재줘서 좋습니다.)
4) dry-run은 위에께 준비된 상태로 3번정도?
5) 만약을 대비한 각 페이지별 얘기할 내용들에 대한 cheat sheet
6) 강조할 부분(강조해서 말할 부분) 미리 찾아서 연습!
7) 예상 질문과 대답
0,5,6,7은 dry-run을 하면서 많이 comment를 받을 수 있으리라고 보입니다.
그 외에 어려운 단어를 되도록 발음하기 좋은 단어로 바꾸는것도 한가지 방법인
거 같습니다.
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