During the recent conference, a friend was scheduled to give a talk about her work. Sitting in the audience watching a parade of marvellous speakers is a special kind of torture, when you are convinced you could not possibly achieve a similar performance. I should know – until the very last year of my PhD, I was not a very talented communicator either. However, after a venture overseas and a stint in a different lab, I found my voice. I wouldn’t say I’m brilliant (far from it), but I have realised the importance of this aspect of science communication and worked hard at being able to at least stomach the idea.
My friend asked how I’d done it. How do you overcome the paralysing fear most people associate with public speaking? I didn’t really have an answer for her at the time – I encouraged her to be confident, which is of course the main ingredient. However, I have thought about it since then, and while watching the remaining conference talks I came across a few things that as an audience member I think can make or break a presentation.
1. Don’t repeat your talk name and title – people can read the program and your first slide (we are mostly smart cookies after all), and it is the job of a good session to chair (also presumably a smart cookie) to give those details when they introduce you. Instead, open by thanking the organisers for the opportunity to present some exciting new work, and a one line teaser to grab the audience – tell them why they should pay attention RIGHT NOW, and not wait until five minutes into your talk. If you don’t have them at the beginning, there will be no getting them back.
2. Oh, you’re skipping your introduction? Because EVERYONE ELSE has given this intro? At a conference specifically about your topic? NO WAY?! Think about your audience early on in the talk’s preparation stage and don’t be afraid to adjust on Day 1 of a three day event. If available, check out the program/other abstracts early, highlight talks with relevance to yours and gauge the level of any remaining introduction that you will need to give. Being able to refer to someone else’s intro not only shows you have engaged with the symposium but also gives you more time to go through the exciting bits (your results!)
3. Keep it simple, stupid. Most of the time you will have a very short window in which to convey your story, which will inevitably be the result of months and months of your blood, sweat and tears. Trying to cram too much into this time window makes your story confusing and hard to follow (10 tiny bar graphs on one slide, anyone?) and people will loose interest. Focus on a simple message, tell people what they need to understand that message, tell them what the message is, then reiterate why your message is important. Simple. As a bonus, people will chase down details with questions, avoiding the dreaded crickets-and-tumbleweeds at the end of a particularly confusing or dense talk.
4. Following on from this, constantly telling people you don’t have time to present this, that or the other (in an effort to keep the slides simple), sounds arrogant and selfish – figure out a story that you CAN tell in the allocated time and reiterate that you are happy to talk details during the breaks.
5. Fake it till you make it. This one has stood the test of time, and for good reason. So much of our perception of a good presenter is taken from their physical cues – and that stems entirely from confidence. If you are nervous beyond belief and terrified of doing something wrong, that will inevitably come through in your body language. If you own your talk and your work, that will come across instead. I think of this like you are the pilot of a plane – if you sound scared and uncertain, your passengers are going to be unsettled and anxious, leading to this cycle of negative reinforcement. If instead you get on the PA system, calmly detail the weather or flight plan (how would they really know how high you’re going to fly??) and make them believe you are in control of the situation, your passengers (the audience) will be calm and the atmosphere relaxed. Everyone will make it out alive and live happily ever after. Or so we hope.
Got any good tips that I’ve missed? Let me know your secret ingredient!
