How to (not) make a good presentation
By Didier Verna on Sunday, May 2 2010, 13:11 - Miscellaneous - Permalink
Based on a recent experience, here is some piece of advice on how to (not) make a good "invited speaker" scientific presentation.
1. Don't think you have been invited because you won a Nygaard price or whatever, but because you have designed a cool language.
2. If you really need to start your talk by showing off your latest book to the audience, at least consider offering one to the lab that has just invited you.
3. Don't spend half of your presentation on your CV (My Life, My Accomplishments etc.), because that's not why you were invited, and because the audience doesn't give a damn.
4. When you have 60 minutes, don't come with the usual 300 slides that you carry everywhere and pick some at random. Your presentation won't make any sense.
5. Before coming, try to take at least 5 minutes to figure out who you're going to talk to, what they know, what they don't. This will help you make more sense out of your presentation, and then, perhaps the audience will actually learn something.
6. Try to understand that when you have an idea, it's not necessarily a good one, and when others have ideas, they're not necessarily bad ones.
7. Try not to be dogmatic because this doesn't look so good to scientists. Show some humility. It is better to have many questions than to have all the answers.
8. If you really want to make people believe that you have actually done some bibliography in your research, try to cite at least one paper more recent than the first OOPSLA in 1986. Otherwise, the picture of your knowledge about other current programming languages is, like, pretty explicit, and a bit sad.
9. Understand that trying to sell your product will never work with researchers.
Well, I guess in summary, try to show some interest for the rest of the world, and especially for your audience, or just don't come. Otherwise, you will look like a fool.
1. Don't think you have been invited because you won a Nygaard price or whatever, but because you have designed a cool language.
2. If you really need to start your talk by showing off your latest book to the audience, at least consider offering one to the lab that has just invited you.
3. Don't spend half of your presentation on your CV (My Life, My Accomplishments etc.), because that's not why you were invited, and because the audience doesn't give a damn.
4. When you have 60 minutes, don't come with the usual 300 slides that you carry everywhere and pick some at random. Your presentation won't make any sense.
5. Before coming, try to take at least 5 minutes to figure out who you're going to talk to, what they know, what they don't. This will help you make more sense out of your presentation, and then, perhaps the audience will actually learn something.
6. Try to understand that when you have an idea, it's not necessarily a good one, and when others have ideas, they're not necessarily bad ones.
7. Try not to be dogmatic because this doesn't look so good to scientists. Show some humility. It is better to have many questions than to have all the answers.
8. If you really want to make people believe that you have actually done some bibliography in your research, try to cite at least one paper more recent than the first OOPSLA in 1986. Otherwise, the picture of your knowledge about other current programming languages is, like, pretty explicit, and a bit sad.
9. Understand that trying to sell your product will never work with researchers.
Well, I guess in summary, try to show some interest for the rest of the world, and especially for your audience, or just don't come. Otherwise, you will look like a fool.
