The most common mistake I see is trying to cram too much material in each slide. Slides should not be treated like a text-based handout, they are visual aids to your speaking. Slides should generally have very few words, and if you do use words they should be a brief statement of the main message (the “so-what”). Often, presenters put a lot of words on their slides as a crutch to help them remember what they want to say. This is distracting. Remember you are the presenter not the slides. Practice so that you can deliver without the crutch (or write down some keywords on cue cards if you must). See point 2 on Garr Reynolds’s slide tips for a great example contrasting a typical busy slide with a simple attention-getting slide.
Your goal is not to recreate your paper in presentation form. Instead focus on 2-3 of the most important results and weave them together into a cohesive narrative.
Built-in templates are rarely appropriate, they have all sorts of adornments that are just distractions. You should be able to justify every pixel in your presentation. You don’t need a logo, or a table of contents on every slide.
Maintain a consistent visual theme (usually 3 colors, one font). I try to extend this theme to my plots as well.
Think carefully about the presentation of your data. Don’t just copy/paste figures from your paper. Almost always the fonts, sizing, emphasis are not appropriate for a presentation.
Not every slide needs a title, but if you do use a title, full sentence titles can be effective (left-justified). For example, a title like “Lift Curve Slope” is rarely helpful. Instead, a title like: “Blade rotation stabilizes the boundary layer and delays separation” more clearly describes the message you are trying to convey with your plot.
Direct labels are usually preferable to legends. 3D plots are usually unhelpful.
Be careful with animations. Only use them if there is a justifiable reason.
Effective Delivery
Practice, practice, practice.
Slow down. This is especially true if you are nervous or if you think you are running out of time. The wrong thing to do if you think time is short is to speak faster to try to cram in more. This will result in the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. Even though more is said, less will be understood.
Clearly define the need at the beginning. I need to know why I should care before I will want to listen to what you did.
Try to avoid pacing or other distracting movement/sounds.
Watching a recording of yourself can be very helpful. It’s not necessarily to record your whole talk. Just repeatedly record the first minute or two of your talk while you practice.
Export a PDF copy of your slides. Often you won’t be allowed to use your own computer and Keynote or Powerpoint files don’t always display 100% correctly on another platform.
Answering Questions
Don’t be defensive. You are not on trial. Your mindset should be one of trying to be helpful.
Take the time to understand and think about the question before even attempting to answer.
Other Resources
Watch Creating effective slides by Jean-luc Dumont. It is 1-hour and well worth your time. See also his book (in our Box folder) and other resources here. Several of the concepts I discuss here come from a couple of excellent seminars of his that I attended.
