Download The Ten Commandments of Effective Presentations - Prof. Michael Miller and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Astronomy in PDF only on Docsity! The Ten Commandments of Presentations (with commentary) 1. T HOU SHALT NOT EXCEED T HINE ALLOT T ED T IME If you make a great presentation, sparkling with wit, humor, and insight, perhaps people will tolerate a little excess time. Realistically, however, this won’t happen often before you win a Nobel, and even if people don’t like your style they will at least tolerate it if you stick to your time. In a conference, running over means that you are stealing time from the next presentation, so DON’T DO IT! 2. T HOU SHALT NOT MUMBLE , ST UMBLE , AND APOLOGIZE It may be a natural tendency to tell the audience that you have laryngitis, that you stayed up until 4 AM making your slides, that you just started working on the project a week ago, etc., to gain sympathy and understanding. Alas, such a proclamation will only alert the audience that you will probably make mistakes. This establishes a negative atmosphere, so avoid it. Your audience wants you to succeed, not to wring your hands dejectedly. 3. T HOU SHALT ENUNCIAT E CLEARLY Demosthenes practiced speaking with pebbles in his mouth so that he could learn to speak clearly. This is something of an extreme solution, but if your delivery sounds like you forgot to take the pebbles out, the subtleties of your message will be lost. Speak slowly and distinctly, remembering that some of your audience is foreign and can’t understand auctioneer-style lectures. 4. T HOU SHALT NOT BURY T HINE SLIDES IN EQUAT IONS Do you want to make sure that your audience doesn’t pay attention? Then, by all means, put as many equations as possible on each page. Unless your audience has the comprehension rate of Evelyn Wood and the mathematical prowess of Chandrasekhar, they will just be confused or bored. Occasional equations are okay, but only if they are essential to the presentation. People want to hear concepts, not integrals. 5. T HOU SHALT NOT FILL T HINE PAUSES In a normal conversation it often seems natural to indicate that one isn’t done speaking by making filler noises. Fine, except that over the course of an hour-long lecture people in the audience will start to count every “um” and “er”. Leave a silent spot if you must! 6. T HOU SHALT NOT FIDGET Another great way to draw attention away from your topic is to have twitches like adjusting your viewgraph by a millimeter every five seconds. Use your laser pointer wisely, too: pointing it at every word is unnecessary and will magnify every involuntary muscle spasm. Gestures should be few and meaningful. 1
