The aim a seminar is to describe your research to your audience. While it is important to convey to the audience what your exciting new contributions to the research are, it is more important that the audience walks away feeling like they understood your talk. Here are some tips on how to prepare an engaging talk for a broad audience:
- Keep the audience in mind both when preparing your talk and when presenting. The Rising Researchers Seminars are aimed at a broad nuclear theory audience. So you should assume that your audience has a good strong physics foundation, but you cannot assume that they know any particular nuclear physics detail beyond undergraduate physics, since they will all have pursued different graduate studies, learning different specific techniques and engaging with different tangential physics fields. In addition, remember that this series often has experimentalists in the audience.
- Provide a broad introduction that sets up the problem or question your research is addressing. Aim to provide a broad enough introduction that every audience member will feel they have understood in order to lay a strong foundation for the specifics of your research. Remember, it’s important to include the motivation for your research in the broader nuclear context, i.e., tell the audience why they should spend the next 40 min. listening to your talk instead of catching up on sleep.
- Don’t fall into the trap of thinking something is “too basic” to explain. We often feel that we are explaining something too basic and that the established senior researchers in the audience will be bored. This is a false impression, you can ask any of them. The less mental energy expended trying to recall “basic” concepts from the last time they taught it 20 years ago, the more energy they’ll have for understanding your actual research.
- Avoid jargon and acronyms. This is one of the biggest pitfalls for junior and senior researchers alike. If you do need to use them in your talk, always define them before you use them, even if they seem common. It’s generally good practice to remind your audience of the definition throughout the talk, particularly if it was defined early in your talk.
- Consider your color schemes carefully. One in twelve men are color blind (1 in 200 women). This is predominantly a red/green deficiency, so try not to use red and green in the same plot or text block. Here is a good resource to understand this better and get some ideas for workarounds. Also try to avoid any of the standard green, cyan, and magenta colors on a white background as they do not project well, even for people who are not color blind.
- Prepare a talk appropriate for the timeframe of the seminar. It is a common mistake, even among seasoned presenters, to cram too much into one talk. The end result is a rushed or incomplete presentation that no-one can follow.
- Keep the story simple. Pick one or two results or concepts that you want the audience to take away from your talk. With each slide you’re thinking of including in your talk, ask yourself it the information on the slide is necessary for understanding the takeaway message. If it is not, don’t include it. Too many plot twists make it hard to follow the story you’re trying to tell.
- Cut the clutter. Your slides are just a visual aid to help you tell a story. But every time you advance a slide, the audience will need time to orient themselves. During that time, they will be focused on reading the slide and not listening to you. To help keep the audience on track:
- Avoid writing full sentences, unless they serve a particular purpose, e.g., summarizing a single take-away message
- A picture is worth a thousand words (or equations). When possible, use a picture or a plot to convey a concept rather than words or equations. It makes the slides more visually appealing and will keep the audience more focused on what you are saying. But remember to always explain the axes, units and different data points before discussing what the figure demonstrates.
- Use equations sparingly. If you must put an equation on your slides, then you should walk through it slowly – explaining all the variables and symbols, and especially the physics of the equation. Color coding parts of the equation can often provide a useful visual aid.
- Pace yourself. For a 60 min. seminar, aim for 50 min. for the talk and 10 min. for questions. It’s common, especially when giving an online talk to speak too quickly. Speak slowly to give the audience a chance to absorb what you said. A good way to slow your speech is to simply stop and take a breath when you feel you are speeding. The audience won’t notice, and you will slow your heart rate and the pace of your thoughts.
- Break up the talk into more digestible segments. This will make it easier for the audience to follow and for you to collect your thoughts. Segments can be created by, e.g., pausing and taking a drink of water, asking the audience if they have any questions or by providing a recap (“What I would like for you to take home from this section is this one key concept…”).
- Don’t rush to finish if you’re running short on time. Ideally you will have practiced your talk several times and have the timing down to exactly 50 min., but, who are we kidding. Questions from the audience, internet issues or even just nerves will throw off even the most rehearsed talked. While it’s usually best to avoid running over time, talking faster to cover more material is hardly ever effective. If you find that you are running out of time, it’s better to clearly wrap up the ideas you have already discussed than race to the end of your talk.
- Don’t let questions derail you. During the talk you will most likely be interrupted by questions, but don’t let them derail your presentation. If the question comes at an awkward time, don’t hesitate to put it off until it’s more convenient, e.g., respond with something like, “Great question, but let me come back to your question once I finishes explaining…” or “If you’ll bear with my, I’ll be addressing that point a few slides from now.”
- Other Tips:
- Be enthusiastic and confident (or at least pretend to be). Fun fact, even very experienced speakers still get stage fright. They’re just better at hiding it.
- PRACTICE!. Try to practice three different ways:
- Practice by yourself: Don’t try to plan out word for word what you will say. Instead, for each slide, identify the most important points that need to be made on that slide and know how you plan to transition to the next slide. This will help you regroup if someone interrupts with a question and will help you keep a more conversational tone rather than the boring lecture tone that will lull everyone to sleep.
- Practice with a trusted colleague: Ask a friend or fellow student or postdoc to listen to your talk and give feedback. Specifically ask them to point out any logical gaps in your talk and/or comment on your delivery. Ask them: Are you talking too fast or skipping over crucial basic information? Are the slides readable? Are you constantly using filler words/sounds like ”um” or ”like” or ”err” that make you sound nervous?
- Practice in front of a more experienced audience: Ask your advisor or your whole research group to listen to your talk. Tell them to ask as many questions as they can think of, especially questions that might consider silly or naive – you will get many such questions from the seminar audience, and they are often the most difficult to answer.
- Be sure to include on your slides:
- Slide numbers. At minimum every slide should have a footer with the slide number to make it easier for people to refer to a particular slide when asking questions. It’s also good practice to include your name, the date, and the name of the seminar on every slide, to make it easier for someone to reference your talk or slide in the future.
- Citations and references. Citations are a must if you use someone else’s figures. But it’s always good to include other relevant references on the slides. Your slides will be available online for a year and will provide a resource for anyone who is interested in better understanding what you’re working on. It is helpful to include DOI, arXiv numbers or hyperlinks to references. Note: if space is an issue, these references don’t need to be easily readable during the talk, just included somewhere on the slide for later reference.
- Acknowledgements for collaborators and funding. A good place for this is either on the title slide, just before the the conclusion slide or on the conclusion slide itself.
For further reading, here are some useful resources and articles on this topic: