Mastering Public Speaking: Expert Tips and Techniques

How To Give a Good Talk Last Revised on 2016.9.19. Sue Moon Professor School of Computing

Why Is It Important? A Good Talk Highly effective means of one-to-many communication Starting Point of Your Reputation 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 2

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 My preferences/difficulties in decreasing/increasing order: Grad students/researchers in the same field Undergrad students in the same field / researchers in other fields High-school students General public 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 5

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 (recommend >=18pt) Readable without restraining Limit # of lines per slide 6

More Details on Slides Do not repeat the same title on multiple slides Your slide is valuable real estate like a billboard Use descriptive/informative titles Use upper/lower cases in a consistent manner Slide title works as S and the rest as V of a sentence. Use a consistent format for bullets in V 7

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 Make graphs readable 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 or projector quality 8

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 9

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 10

Appendix A: Guideline for Your 1stPublic Talk

For First-Time Non-Native Speaker [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 12

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? 13

You Are Ready to Pack and Go Only When You Have Done Four Dry Runs You SHALL register only after 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 15

Youre Not the Only One Stefan Savage practiced his 1stSOSP 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 16

Appendix B: Non-Native Speaker s Disadvantage

How Much Harder Do You Have to Work? IMHO, about 30% In paper writing and presentation That is, Even if your TOEFL IBT score is 100+; TOEIC 900+ Even if you don t need a dictionary for every paragraph when reading papers How to bridge the 30% gap? So much an advisor can do Start now and invest time for your future 18

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 yours into yet another one of them 20

Appendix D: Tips from Fellow Students

0) slide , animation . 1) full script 2) 10 ( ) - , non-native speaker . , .--; axis . 3) ( konglish .) ( .) 4) dry-run 3 ? 5) cheat sheet 6) ( ) ! 7) 0,5,6,7 dry-run comment . . 22

Appendix E: Comparison of Two Talk Slides of the Same Work

Two Talks of the Same Work http://an.kaist.ac.kr/~sbmoon/talk/2015/Sample1.pdf http://an.kaist.ac.kr/~sbmoon/talk/2015/Sample2.pptx Sample1 went thru multiple revisions Sample2 came 2 months after Sample1 Both had the same target audience, duration, etc. Sample2 is easier to view, clearer in explanation, and better worded than Sample1. Feedback and revisions make a difference. For more details, visit http://sbmoon.tistory.com/243 24