Three steps to getting into the right mindset for your research presentations

Presenting an academic paper at a conference?  Congratulations, but don’t think because the paper is written and accepted that your presentation is done. No, not by a long shot. If you think it’s easy, think again: you need to change your mindset. Do this by paying attention to the following three things:

Good presentations can’t salvage bad content

The number of presentations in the world must be staggering.  I would not know how to estimate it, but thinking about presentations made me think that we can classify any presentation in one of four quadrants:

Blaming technology… oh so convenient!

Bad workmen blame their tools

Lately I have seen several mentions to bad, bad Powerpoint…  A conference bans the use of Powerpoint, the NY Times has a front page article portraying Powerpoint as the enemy…  But how much of the blame can really be attributed to Powerpoint…?

To listen or not to listen…

When at an event where multiple presentations are made the question is always to listen or not to listen… Obviously there are criteria that differ from person to person.  If the topics are diverse, the choice is (mostly) easy as the topic may ease the decision.  But what if the topics are nearer to one another, or you have a keen interest in more than one topic?

Having some fun when making slides

Do you like making slides? No? Maybe that is because you don’t play enough.  making slides for me is great fun (when) I have some time on hand.  I love taking pictures and using them on slides.  I love playing with fonts… I’m less of a fan of animation, but even that can sometimes be fun – but very distracting to the audience is not used properly. So I thought I’ll share some of my favorite examples and tools with you…