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(TDD) Test-Driven Development – its use in scientific presentations

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How does one know that everything is going to be fine “on the night”, or at least on the big day of our presentation? Of course, one could cross fingers – but should the index finger be over the middle finger or the opposite  :) One could rehearse, and rehearse, and rehearse as proposed here - this works but can one rehearse the unexpected? The rehearsal trap is so pernicious!

Do you know the meaning of the TDD acronym? If you do, you are a leading edge programmer.

“In Test-Driven Development, each new feature begins with writing a test. [...] it makes the developer focus on the requirements before writing the code.” (Wikipedia)

 The presenter has plenty of new features to test when leaving the safety of the simple black and white bullet slide, features like  video, audio, colors, live internet access, and others. Before creating a video, the producer makes sure that both camera and monitor are calibrated to the same color bars to guarantee color accuracy. In the early days of television, the TV stations broadcasted a test pattern before airing the programs so that the TV owners could turn the various alignment / calibration buttons to ensure image quality.
 The concept is not new, but as far as I now, it is not used, or at least not extensively, in presentations.

PowerPoint, Keynote, OpenOffice, … all these applications have their preferences when it comes to  audio or video formats. But looking at computer requirements is not enough. How about taking into account the audience requirements like readability, audibility? And while we are at it, let’s add the presenter requirements like good eye contact with the audience.

How can TDD help?  Test these requirements prior to giving your presentation. Where? Right there in the room where you will present. Create specific PowerPoint slides that help you identify problems before they occur. I will not describe all the slides, just a few to give you the idea.

A slide to test color consistency between the computer image and the projected image

A slide to test projector resolution and alignment

A slide to test the presence of the video/audio / image codecs your  presentation will require (for example, WMV, Mov, Mpeg4, Mpeg2, AIFF, WAV, Tiff, gif, Pic,…)

Slides cannot help you identify all problems. You will need the help of people to represent the audience and give you feedback on the adequacy of the sound system and room lighting.

TDD – now you know what it means and how to apply it in the context of an oral presentation.

Learning from Henri Poincaré (part 2)

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I am satisfied with taking note of the difficulty, without pretending to solve it, thus ending on a big question mark. Still, it is interesting to state problems even though their solution appears remote.

And with that sentence, Henri Poincaré ends his chapter on the Milky Way. How do you end your presentation? A bored (therefore boring) plain restatement of your accomplishments, or do you show your willingness to share the open scientific questions your work has identified? In your opinion, which option highlights the scientist in you more?

Do you find yourself intimidated by the sheer brain power of some of the scientists attending your talk? Does knowing they are in front of you have a debilitating effect on your performance? Take heart. See how Henri Poincaré pragmatically considers his own mental abilities.

“No doubt a vaster and a keener mind than ours would judge otherwise. But that matters little; it is not this superior mind that we have to use, but our own.” (Science and method, Henri Poincaré, Dover Publications, 2003, translated by Francis Maitland)

Source Flickr, Author Dullhunk

Dear reader,

Featured

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A flourishing scientific career is strengthened by a sustained flow of oral presentations. And this is where most scientists may wish that, like bees, they were equipped with a social gene enabling them to dance uninhibited in front of an audience avid for new sources of ideas. Fortunately (at least so far) nobody has identified a presentation gene in our DNA. Presentation skills, even though they appear native in those who flourish, are not found in the human genome. They are learned and, in this blog, they are shared.

This blog presents the challenges faced by the scientist who presents. It also points to other URLs with resources for presenters, and it contains podcasts and original videos with PowerPoint or Keynote techniques also found here http://www.scivee.tv/user/7043/ and podcasts http://scientific-presentations.com/?feed=podcast . Naturally, it features the book “When the scientist presents“, published by World Scientific, and authored by yours truly :)

You may also have landed on this page because you discovered the existence of SWAN, a tool based on the techniques I promoted in “Scientific Writing 2.0: A reader and writer’s guide” (World Scientific Publishing).  My friends from the University of Joensuu in Finland implemented this tool in Java. SWAN (Scientific Writing AssistaNt) will help you identify whether your scientific paper is written in a way that will enable the reviewer to appreciate your contribution. SWAN is also found here:  http://cs.uef.fi/swan/index.html
Contact_me: whenthescientistpresents @ gmail dot com.

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SMILE

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The best ice breaker that I know of is not “a” smile, but “THE” smile.

Not the cheshire cat grin, but the HAPPY smile born out of the sincere happiness of being able to communicate something of value to your audience

Not the smile constantly deformed by words attempting to make their way through horizontally stretched lips, but the SILENT smile unencumbered by words

Not the smile that doesn’t even bring a sparkle in your eyes, but the GLOWING smile that radiates from your lips and touches your eyes

Not the stressed smile you put on by necessity, but the RELAXED smile from a relaxed face.

Such a smile touches your audience; it moves people’s attitude towards you from neutral to positive.

If you find it hard to smile, if audience pressure depresses your levator and zygomaticus muscles, take heart. Look at that smiling face in the audience and let it warm you and vaporise your anxiety. The great scientist and philosopher Pascal found that out. And never mind the number of muscles required to smile (13**), because what matters is the source of the signal used to trigger your smile: Your heart, a heart who cares about the people in the audience, a heart filled with gladness because the people in the room have accepted your invitation to come and listen to you. They are your guests, you are their host. SMILE :)

Imager Flickr; Author Didier-lq

What can the scientist who presents learn from Benjamin Franklin

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Here is a passage of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, where he gives advice on how to handle people who contradict you. This is particularly applicable to situations you may encounter during your Q&A, or even in scientific discussions with other scientists. Brilliant advice, as you will discover! You may be unfamiliar with the word “Junto“: It represents a political group or faction. Notice how closely Franklin’s argument mirrors Pascal’s argument. It may well be that Benjamin Franklin was familiar with Pascal’s writings. He was living in Paris while writing this part of his autobiography. Pascal does not say what he observed as the consequence of following his own recommendations; fortunately for us, Benjamin Franklin does!

I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself, agreeably to the old laws of our Junto, the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fix’d opinion, such as certainly, undoubtedly, etc., and I adopted, instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine a thing to be so or so; or it so appears to me at present. When another asserted something that I thought an error, I deny’d myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing immediately some absurdity in his proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I propos’d my opinions procur’d them a readier reception and less contradiction; I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevail’d with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

Image Flickr; Author Wallyq

Nothing reveals personal expertise better than questions; therefore,…

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They were certain that their expertise would be seen through the high density of information on their slides. They were certain that removing an ounce of proof would be like losing a pound of flesh – a tragedy of Shakespearian dimension. They were certain that confidence displayed would translate into expertise perceived. But their certainties were rational myths.

Slides never proved expertise. 1) Slides prepared by an expert may be presented by a non-expert. 2) Junior scientists not yet familiar with a field of research tend to densely pack facts and points on slides so as not to forget (mentioning) them. The more a presentation looks like a condensed version of a paper (for example by keeping the reference to figures used, or by packing on one slide all the visuals illustrating a point), the more the presenter may reveal lack of expertise. Why? An expert’s understanding of a problem is such that, what is principal claim, what is central proof, and what is key impact, are easily identified. An expert can easily unpack a slide; A non-expert can’t.

Confidence never proved expertise. 1) Multiple rehearsals give most presenters a higher level of confidence which leads to a smoother delivery – regardless on their level of expertise in the presented topic. 2) Over-confidence often marks ignorance. You only know that you don’t know when you know enough. Superficial knowledge may give you undue confidence. 3) Lack of scientific expertise cannot be inferred from the nervousness of a presenter.

Correct answers to unprepared questions prove personal expertise. It is through the Q&A following a slide presentation that the  presenter reveals the extent of his or her expertise. The unpredictability of questions and the presence of other experts in attendance guarantee it – for indeed, it takes an expert to identify an expert.

In conclusion, do not try to establish your expertise through packed slides. Let it shine during the Q&A session. But for that, you need to make sure that you have time left to answer questions! Indeed, finish slightly early so that you have more Q&A time. And when one asks a question, do not answer at length, thus wasting the opportunity to be asked more expertise-revealing questions, and to identify other scientists interested in your work.

Oh, and one last thing… An expert never answers a question with “I think”. An experts knows.

I Think, Therefore I Am…. Not an Expert (non-existentialist ending to the famous René Descartes quote)

Image source: Flickr; Author :Tintin44

Rules of thumb for presentations – how good are they?

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People like formulas. They are expedient rules of thumb that guard against dangerous extremes. “Plan for one minute  and a half per slide”, some say, “and never put more than 5 bullets point and more than 5 words per bullet point”. Under these rules lie hidden assumptions about people’s attention span, prior knowledge of the presented topic, text readability, number of clicks needed to go through the material on the slide, audience interactivity, and more!  Presenters could be fooled into thinking that as long as these rules of thumb are followed, their presentation will be fine.

Rule of thumb #1: “Plan for one and a half minute per slide” is about as silly as telling a writer “Plan for chapters with 20 pages”. What is the purpose of this rule? It prevents presenters from putting so much information on one slide that to cover it would take more than 90 seconds. It also prevents boredom: people don’t generally like to stare at the same information for a long time. They get bored because they can read faster than the presenter can speak. Spending three minutes explaining each bullet point is as effective as administering a sleeping pill. What is important here is visual interest, not screen-time. A 30 second slide that gathers interest is fine. A two minute slide that exploits a particularly fruitful visual is fine so long as interest is maintained (let the audience be the judge of that through their questions). A slide that dynamically reveals and removes information through the use of layers can last a very long time, and it’s perfectly fine.

Rule of thumb #2: “Use not more than 5 lines and 5 words per line” (some say six lines, some say four; some say six words per line…). This is silly too, particularly in scientific presentations where long compound nouns abound. So what is the purpose of this rule? 1) to decrease the amount of text on a slide, so that the slide remains readable; 2) to prevent long lists that remove the need to try and select what is important and leave out what is less important; 3) to force the presenter to be concise as opposed to verbose; and 4) to allow the slide to be presented in less than 90 seconds; and thus maintain visual interest by not keeping the same slide on the screen too long – a point already covered above. What is important here is, again, the “Less-is-more” principle: the need to be selective to be  legible, AND to be intelligible (clear), and finally, the need to keep visual interest with something other than words.

There is however one rule of thumb I like… but then again, because it works for me does not mean it works for you. This rule of thumb is based on your arm length and your palm size. It determines whether the text on your slide will be readable once projected on the large screen in front of your audience. Readability of text is not to be decided on the grounds that you can read everything on your PowerPoint slide, while sitting one foot away from your computer screen. High screen resolution and brightness will even allow font size 7 to be readable! So if your arm is long enough and your hand is not super tiny, and most of all, if you do not look like a chimp, this rule of thumb might work for you.

Start your slideshow. Stretch out your arm and turn your hand horizontally, fingers pointing to your left if you are right handed, and vice versa. Move away from your computer screen until your stretched hand hides the screen. Remove your hand (but do keep it at the end of your forearm) away from the screen. If you can read everything on the screen from that distance, chances are your audience will be able to read it too, once that slide is projected. Oh, by the way, if you really want to be sure, turn down the brightness of your screen to 50% and move back one half meter more :)

Photo Flickr – by Lintmachine

020 The TED presenter

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The Apple flag gives you a hint. Our next guest is from Apple, in Cupertino California. His name is Ken Eddings – and he is the man behind Apple’s DNS. But it is not the IT guru I are interviewing, it is the Ken Eddings who frequently attends TED conferences worldwide… reason is, he provides technical support for its organizers. To those of you not familiar with TED, I recommend you go to their website: www.ted.com; TED advertizes itself with the slogan: “Riveting Talks by Remarkable People”.  So it was interesting to get Ken’s perspective on what is a good TED presenter, and on the type of technical issues he had to face while supporting TED talks.

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presentation traps 4 – the mouth trap

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It is the 10:15 am coffee break. Outside the meeting room is a long table covered in cream-coloured linen. On it the conference attendees find the traditional offerings: coffee, cream, Ceylon tea, brown and white sugar, and finger food to relieve the hunger pangs and make the long wait for lunch more tolerable. You did not join the people who left the room because it is your turn to present right after the coffee break. You are standing next to the computer. Your slides are ready. And you are waiting for people to come back into the room. Your friend walks in, slowly, holding a saucepan on which you see a cup filled nearly to the brim with piping hot coffee. she even thought of taking two sticks of your favourite raw sugar, and three small sealed cups of half and half cream. “Here, John. Take This. It will perk you up.” You smile, express your gratitude, move your hand towards the cup, and… STOP REWIND.

That  stainless steel pitcher of icy water glistening on the small table close to the lectern looks so refreshing. Condensation sends rivulets of crystalline water down its slippery sides. You are about to present. The glass in front of you is empty. You are a bit nervous and you think that drinking might water down that anxiety of yours. Your hand moves towards the pitcher, and… STOP REWIND.

The next day. You are also to present on behalf of your manager who missed his flight. His talk is right after lunch. The morning drags on but lunch finally arrives, and you are famished. You look at the buffet set out for the conference participants, and you see an irresistible spaghetti Bolognese dish between the roasted spuds with braised pork and the broccoli/cauliflower/mushroom/sweet peas mix. Your take the spaghetti serving spoon and lift it as carefully as a crane would lift its cargo prior to depositing it on your plate. Back at your table, you sit down, trap a wad of spaghettis between your fork and your spoon, and… STOP REWIND.

Can you say what might happen next in each scenario that may make your talk less effective?

Iced Water: Bad for your vocal chords. You need to warm them prior to a talk by speaking, not by drinking icy water. Drinking warm water is better for you, but hot coffee?

Coffee or tea: Prior to a presentation, your body produces the adrenaline hormone as a result of your anxiety. Coffee and tea contain caffeine, which helps the body keep that adrenaline of yours in your blood stream longer than it should. This is not wise. But milk?

Milk: The milk protein thickens natural mucus, such as saliva. Your anxiety may overproduce saliva which, combined with milk, thickens. As a result, your vocal chords feel as though something is getting in their way. They trigger a throat clearing reflex …while you are presenting, of course. And the sound-trapping lapel microphone you are wearing takes great pleasure in amplifying that unromantic sound to nauseating levels over the room speakers.

Spaghetti: The reason why the best restaurants offer a special towel for people who eat spaghetti is because the probability of decorating their guests’ white Armani blouse or shirt with red tomato sauce is fairly high. If the red sauce hits the target, be aware that trying to wash the stain away only contributes to spread it or, given enough water, to give you that wet t-shirt look … all this, right before your presentation, of course, with no time to return to your hotel room to change clothes. To prevent the audience from seeing the red stain, you will try to hide it in a number of different and creative ways while speaking; for example : facing the wall standing sideways,or turning your back to the audience, or holding some document in front of your chest during the whole talk… thus causing the audience to wonder what’s wrong with you !

So presenters, beware of the mouth trap. Drink warm water, avoid milk and coffee, and take a change of clothes if you intend to eat spaghetti!

image source: Flickr. Fresh tomato sauce by Urbanfoodie33

021 Presenting to a lay audience

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Today our podcast features Dr Cleo Choong. She had to give a presentation to members of parliament at the British House of Commons as part of a competition for the engineer of the year award. What is it like to present to such a prestigious gathering of elected congressmen? Did she win the competition? Find out how she handled this most difficult presentation.

source: Flickr, by vqm8383

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continuity bugs in linear slide presentations

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Whenever you take a non linear media and flatten it (make it linear), you introduce problems of two kinds:

1) Discontinuities in logic. The audience needs to remember what was connected to what, earlier in your presentation, to see the connection logic.

2) Discontinuity in time. As time passes, the audience remembers less and less of what they heard and saw. As a result, the memory fails to reconnect the time-broken strands of a disrupted argument.

Here is an illustration. Each square represents a slide. The slides are numbered from 1 to 5. The eroding effect of time on memory is here symbolized by the greying of colours, from dark (last slide best remembered) to grey (started to fade in memory) to dotted line (first slide, may have been presented 8 to 10 minutes before slide 5, vague or no longer remembered).

flattening problems

I assume here that all slides are equal in duration. Things worsen when slides are text heavy. We have all encountered slides that are so dense in information and take so long to explain that the audience has forgotten what was said at the beginning of the slide by the time the end of the slide is reached!

So here is my tip:

Visualize the logical connections between your slides, either as a domino or a graph. This will help you identify the potential memory-related problems your audience may face. And apply one of the following solutions to remove these problems.

debugging

The Announce technique consists in telling the audience what will be covered in the next (two) slides. The audience, once alerted, finds it much easier to keep the information of slide 1 in memory and relate it to slide 2 and 3.

The Repeat technique simply re-presents past information so as to be able to refresh fading memory (like the refresh cycle that keeps RAM memory alive!)

The Merge technique consists in keeping on the same slide all related elements, presenting them one by one (one at a time) to avoid overwhelming the audience with too much information at once, but allowing people to see past information on the same slide. Naturally, this is only possible if the slide can contain these related elements without losing readability.

The Restructure technique, as its name indicates, looks at alternative structures that would enable the contents to be presented without discontinuities.

Enjoy!

What can the scientist who presents learn from Herbert Simon (Part 1)

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Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, in a 1969 article entitled “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World”, points out the problems created by the wealth of information.

A rabbit-rich world is a lettuce-poor world. [...] Now, when we speak of an information-rich world, we may expect, analogically, that the wealth of information means a dearth of something else – a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

Let’s step back from this world view, down to the ballroom where the scientist presents. The problems are similar. During a presentation both presenter and slides are competing for the attention of the audience. Attention, Herbert Simon points out, is not easy to divide.

Human beings are essentially serial, 0ne-thing-at-a-time devices. If they attend to one thing, they cannot simultaneously, attend to another.

Expecting the audience to discover alone how to connect what is heard with what is seen on an information-rich slide, is expecting far too much! Discovering which area on the slide is alluded to by the speech, requires much attention. Because attention, like the time it requires, is scarce, little attention is left for the later (and much more important)  stage of knowledge extraction from the message content. By the time the audience is ready to process the information, the presenter will often have shifted to a new area of interest. And the twain do not meet!

Matching what the eyes see with what the ears hear is not simple. It is not just a matter of helping the eye focus on the area being described (although it helps). The audience has to be familiar with the vocabulary and symbols used, and has to have prior domain knowledge before being able to match oral information with visual information. For example, display multiple colorful shapes on a screen, say a blue dodecagon, a red circle, and a green cone,  and ask the audience: focus on the polygonal shape with an infinite number of sides, and whose shape reflects light in the 620-670 nanometer range. The audience is presumed to have sufficient prior knowledge to identify the shape. But how learned is the audience? How much of the vocabulary used by the presenter is understood by the audience? And what is wrong with “look at the red circle”.

What can we learn from the time-bound antagonistic relationship between attention and information-rich slides?

1) Help the audience visually identify the object requiring people’s attention using the simplest possible vocabulary before you talk about this object, in order to minimize the demands on what will always be a limited attention pool.

2) Decrease the amount of information on a slide (by layering, pruning, or condensing) to a level that allows the audience to have more time to pay attention to what you say because it has less to look at, in a given amount of time.

3) Confine your oral comments to what is visually singled out –  To be matched, oral and visual information require co-location of attention. Synchronize the two. Do not digress.

016Questions from experts and head hunters

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Our new guest, Dr Leong Mun Kew, reveals what brings senior researchers to your talk. He even mentions the type of questions he would ask when head hunting for his lab. This insider view into presentation outcomes comes from the man who is now CTO and acting CIO of the Singapore National Library Board.

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015 personal credibility

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Not every piece of research represents a paradigm shift. How is one to present research which is lower on the innovative scale? In this podcast we also discovers that a polished abstract is not enough to bring an audience to your talk. Listen in as Professor Motiwalla shares his experience.

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What can the scientist who presents learn from Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

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Santiago Ramon Y Cajal was a neurologist who shared with Golgi the nobel prize in 1906. In his excellent little book “Advice for a young investigator”, translated for MIT press by Neely and Larry Swanson, one finds some remarkable insights on the perfect scientist presenter host. In the preface to his second edition Cajal writes about scientists.

While not large, there is nevertheless a group of young enthusiasts who stay in constant communication about their ideas and feelings because of their love for science and desire to collaborate on the magnum opus of progress.

If I am to accept Cajal’s definition of true blue scientists, I cannot help but wonder where has the presenter’s enthusiasm gone? Where is the passion? Why let fear strap and padlock your passion in a straightjacket prior to delivering the scientific talk? Yes, the fear may be there, let it be. But then, be a Houdini presenter, deliver your passion, let its fire ignite interest in your work so that like-minded international colleagues from your audience desire to network with you. How do you do that? First and foremost, prior to climbing on the stage, recharge yourself with the excitement that ionized you when your working hypothesis was verified by your data. Then banish the thought of captivating minds with result outputs, because people do not celebrate outputs, they celebrate outcomes.

Nothing highlights the energetic personality of the investigator better, distinguishing him from the throng of automatons in science, than those discoveries where perseverance and logic get the upper hand over mechanics, where brain is paramount and material facilities are negligible.

Never miss a chance to present your current achievements in the context of your past work, to establish credibility through tenacity, to dazzle by the power and soundness of the thread of reasons sustaining your hypothesis, and to confound the big spenders with the frugality of your data needs because of the excellent representative and discrimination power of your data. Do not belittle or silence the story of your data if that story builds your credibility. Do not brush aside the history that led to your findings, if that history forged your expertise.

Presenters with Foreign Names

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Lebrun is my last name. Actually, I have no prior name, so my last name is theoretically my first name, but in fact my first name is jean-Luc. Confused? Alright, let’s start again. Lebrun is my family name and Jean-Luc is my given name. The family name is not given, it is inherited:)

My name is easy to pronounce, at least I think so, my parents think so, and so do the 200 million French-speaking people, but you might find it difficult to pronounce. Our name is a people interface. It is like a door handle. It gives access to us. It is the opening move in the networking game. Cryptic, indecipherable names are intimidating, possibly repulsive. Some will avoid talking to you for fear of mispronouncing your name – a serious offence in their culture. How would you pronounce the Vietnamese last name “Phuc”? Look here.

So when your name appears on your title slide, make sure you also provide the easy-to-pronounce short form of your name in the language spoken during the conference. “Hi, my name is  Jean-Luc Lebrun, but you can call me John”.  ”Watakushino namaiwa jean-luc Lebrun desu, jonto yondekudasai”. “Ni Hao, wode mingzi shi jean-luc Lebrun, danshi ni keyi jiao wo “Yue Han”. In Singapore, people from Chinese descent often adopt an English given name to make it easier for their non-Chinese speaking friends to address them, particularly when your first name is easily mispronounced.

Telling people how they can address you, will encourage them to ask questions during the Q&A since they know how to address you in a manner acceptable to you. Put the burden of making your name easy to pronounce ON YOU, not on the audience. It will reveal your social skills and your wish to be accessible to all.

12 pearls of presenter wisdom

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This podcast will not explain why the word “pearl” has been associated with the word wisdom, but it will give you tips you probably can’t live without.

For those of you who are interested,  the expression “pearls of Wisdom” might have biblical origins.  (a person without discernment (who is not wise) is someone who casts pearls before swine – pearls here would refer to valuable words revealing the good news – Matthew 7:6)

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PowerPoint effects without effects

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When navigating back to an interesting slide during the Q&A session, things do not always happen as the scientist who presents would like them to! Instead of going straight to the place of interest, the desired slide releases its contents, a click, and an effect at a time, as it did during the formal presentation, until it finally reveals the complete visual. There is a better way… as this video reveals.

Buy your way out of troublesome questions

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Preempt. Nice verb, but little used. It is composed of two parts: “pre” which means “before”, and “empt” which comes from the latin “emere” –  ”to buy”. In essence, to prempt is to buy your way out of a potentially difficult situation before it has a chance to happen.

What is there to preempt when you present?

1) The embarrassment to have to admit that you are not the expert the audience thought you were

If you have been asked to present on behalf of the first author, chances are, that during the Q&A, you will get expert questions only the first author (not you) could answer. Naturally, you should have turned down the invitation to be a substitute, but you may not have had the choice, or you may have found the invitation to attend that conference in sunny Hawaii, just too tempting! It is best to preempt such expert questions by warning the audience prior to the q&a session that you are not the first author, and that there could be questions you might not be able to answer immediately. Of course, as its name indicates, such a preemptive move has a cost: you will not be considered an expert, and networking with experts will be limited. But it is far better to honestly set the expectations than to have to face experts noisily expressing their disappointment towards your lack of in-depth knowledge, live, in front of your audience.

2) The embarrassment to have to admit that your contribution cannot immediately solve people’s real problems

Often times, you are presenting mouth-watering research, at least in terms of potential, but it is based on modelling, or it is still at the proof of concept stage. During the Q&A, questions abound on the significance of your work, or on its manufacturing or marketability. All your answers end up sounding like “we haven’t done that yet”, “we’re looking into it”, or “this is yet to be determined.” The audience is disappointed. Your title seemed to indicate the contribution was real and had already gone beyond the experimental stage, but it was a pipe dream. Therefore, preempt such misconceptions. Set up the scope, the exact nature of your accomplishments up-front in your talk. That way, the audience will not have the wrong expectations. During your conclusion, honestly announce what are the next steps necessary to take your contribution closer to a real tangible product or application. As in the previous case, this preemptive move has a cost. It might deflate the enthusiasm of a few people in the audience, but preemting is better than to have to minimise the impact of your work during the q&a.

Learning from Peter Feibelman

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In his marvellous little book, “A Ph.D. Is Not Enough”, solid state physicist Professor Feibelman uses a metaphor near and dear to my heart, that of the fugue.

“But in giving your talk, you should just tell a story. Its structure should be organic, invisible. Your listeners should be propelled from idea to idea with the same sense of inevitability they feel on hearing a Bach fugue.”

Professor Feibelman likes fugues of the musical kind, and to help you understand his point, I ought to explain what he means by “the sense of inevitability”, but without a fugue to listen to, it is an impossible task!

So, given the tremendous restrictions one faces when playing back (and Bach) music on the web, I decided to download the music score of Bizet’s Symphony in C, now in the public domain, and spend the rest of the day to enter the music score inside Logic Pro 8, hire a few Garageband instruments to play the cello, violins, viola, and basson, and give you (a royalty free) 52 seconds of the fugue contained in the second movement of the symphony (adagio). I added the sound of the bell right before the theme of the fugue is played. Listen to the mp3 file, and come back to this text, otherwise, you will not appreciate Professor Feibelman’s “sense of inevitability” comment.

bizet-fugue

I know, the music sounds robotic without quantization and cheesy without the high end Native-Instruments samples, but the purpose of this piece is not to stop you from attending an orchestral performance of Bizet’s symphony in C, or from buying Charles Munch‘s great rendition of it. The purpose of this piece is to describe the “sense of inevitability”.
The same theme is presented five times in the space of 50 seconds or so. You cannot ignore it, and you cannot forget it. Between each presentation of the theme, the composer uses musical glue to enhance the theme and bring cohesion to the piece. As more and more instruments are added, the music rises to a crescendo.  How aptly the metaphor applies to presentations! The theme of your presentation is your title. Each one of your slides refreshes that theme. Your title “organically” moulds  the structure of your presentation. From time to time, you may have a transition slide, or you may transition between two slides while the screen behind you is blanked. These transitions are the equivalent to the musical glue the composer adds between the end of the theme’s presentation and its inevitable resurgence in a richer environment.

The fugue inevitably rises to a crescendo as more and more instruments are added. In the fugue metaphor, each slide is an instrument. Your past slides have to be so clear that their theme continues to ring, reverberate in the recesses of your mind, blending harmoniously with your future slides. A fugue becomes more and more complex as the various parts contribute their melody, but not one of these parts disregards the theme of the fugue. They all support and enhance it. The end result is a harmoniously complex musical delight whose greatest strength is the focus of your attention on ONE THEME. May this be true also of all your scientific presentations, and let that theme be your title.

Visible map and invisible shortcuts – navigation tools

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“Keep to time” is good advice, but how? Since slide contents are the greatest time-consuming factor, it makes sense to adjust them until the presenter no longer faces the approaching wall of time with the fear of crashing into it. However, despite the best of intentions and preventive content pruning, the unexpected may bring that dreaded wall closer: an unplanned digression, a forced late start, or an improbable interruption maybe. Is the presenter ready for the unexpected? tools, such as hyperlinks and map slides demonstrated on this video, help the presenter manage time better.

The map slide is best used for long presentations. It helps the audience track your progress while revealing the overall structure of your talk. Hyperlinks are usually invisible doors (buttons, objects linking to other slides in your presentation) that allow the presenter to skip slides without the audience noticing it (thus saving time), or to insert slides on the fly as it were to answer some live questions during the talk (thus adding time).

All tools have intrinsic limitations. Hyperlinks and map slides are no exception.

The map slide (also called outline slide) is not useful in short (10-15 minute) presentations where it is preferable to go straight into your story after the audience has been hooked into it.

Hyperlinks force you to use a presentation remote with embedded mouse because you have to click on them to activate them. Without that, you are on a short leash. You are required to stand close to the lectern where your computer mouse is; this may not be the most advantageous position on the podium to host your guests scientists.

Hyperlinks, if numerous, create a labyrinth where the Minotaur (and you) could easily get lost (remember these links are supposed to be invisible).

hyperlinks gone wild

You want hyperlinks to remain invisible, so that the audience is not aware of your emergency shortcuts. But this great asset is also a great liability if you do not remember where you have hidden your precious links.To make matters worse, Microsoft PowerPoint hides non-text links in slide creation mode (thankfully, Keynote does not).

A Hyperlink is half witted.  Imagine you had to cross a hot stream by jumping from one stepping stone to another. If I were to remove one of the stepping stones, you would not jump. Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 for Mac jumps, landing you into hot water regardless (taking you to the wrong slide – the one with the same number as the removed slide). Smarter Apple Keynote ’09 disables the hyperlink.

Dangling Hyperlink gets attached to wrong slide in PowerPoint 2008

A Hyperlink is half smart because it keeps pointing to a slide even when you change the order of that slide in your presentation.

Link continues to point to slide even after slide is moved to another place in the presentation