Florida Chapter, American Fisheries Society Guidelines on Slide Preparation and Presentation

Giving a slide presentation is an important event for you and a critical means of defraying information to the scientific community. An audience of your peers will attend your paper because they are interested in your work and what you have to say. A well-organized and well-presented paper reflects positively on you, your work, and your organization. The quality of your presentation is very important for getting your points across to a large audience and can only be assured by adequate preparation.

At the Florida Chapter meetings in Brooksville, we have the advantage of a rear projection slide screen. This has the notable advantage of a crisp clear image with little wavering due to a fabric screen blowing, and no problems with the audience jarring a projector or casting shadows on the screen. However, it does not work well with laser pointers, and it means you cannot see the projectionist to request refocus or repositioning of a slide. You will have control of the remote and a mechanical pointer. You will also have a podium with a light and a microphone. The room seats up to 100 people and is normally quite full. Consequently planning ahead is important.

Every year some details change in the meeting's organization and requirements,so it is important to be updated. Even if you are an "old hand", please be sure to read this guide.

Bring your final version of the presentation with you in a Kodak Carousel, with the slides carefully ordered, positioned and locked into the carousel. Practice with them in advance to ensure that they flow properly with your talk, are all horizontal (use vertical slides at the risk of having them cropped off by the screen's orientation), text can be read at arms length (when holding the slide up to a diffuse light source), and that the slides are not reversed (check to make sure text reads well, even in photos where uniforms labels etc. might indicate the slide was reversed). Label the carousel with your name and the date and time of the presentation, and give the carousel to the projectionist at least 15-minutes before your session (not talk) begins.

Converting your paper to a technical presentation

Your abstract is published at our web site and is available as a bound handout to all of the registrants. Many of those in the audience will have already read or glanced through your abstract. Consequently during your presentation, they will expect to hear you introduce the problem, talk about your approach and support your conclusions. You can be less formal than in the written version, but please stick to the topic introduced in your title and abstract. You have 15 minutes to present your work, in addition there are five minutes for being introduced, getting to the podium and answering several questions from the audience or moderator.

Make every word count!
Avoid spending too much time describing the structure of your talk - get straight to the point. Don't simply transcribe a written paper or report to your talk; provide a more intuitive and less detailed (though still specific) description of your work and try to get across a few key ideas. You have been working on the subject of your paper for months or years. What is perfectly clear to you must be made clear in minutes to people not so familiar with the subject. Do not assume that they know what you know. Rehearsal in front of others will help, as described later.

General tips

• Get across a few key points
  You can only transmit a few key points to the audience. Concentrate on the central themes and ideas of your work. Your audience can learn the details by reading your main issues as outlined in your abstract or discuss them with you later.
  Establish and clarify concepts, definitions, trends and comparisions.
  Try to use familiar examples or analogies. Compare with existing approaches or technologies that are well-known to your audience. Resist using jargon, or acronyms since your jargon may not be as widely spoken as you think. If you do use a word that may not be familiar to the audience, define it.
• Follow a simple outline
  Of course, the outline you will use for your presentation will depend on the nature of your work. However, most top-quality presentations follow a variation of the outline below:
  • Introduce the problem. What led to your work? What were your goals?
  • Summarize previous, related work. Point out its limitations for your problem
  • Describe your solution or approach, focussing on the key ideas, and present the conclusions to be drawn from your work
  • Present any experimental evidence you have to support your conclusions
  • Identify incorrect approaches taken so as to prevent others from wasting effort
  • Why is your solution a good one? What are its disadvantages or limitations?
  • Suggest other applications of your work. Do you recommend further development along the lines of your work? Why? Or why not?
  • Summarize the presentation with a simple statement of the problem, your key ideas, your conclusions, and, if appropriate, your directions for future work. Try to tell your story in a straight line. Each point should lead to the next, and remember that understanding is enhanced with simple organization. If your audience has not read your paper or abstract, you want them to leave the room with a strong desire to do so
  • Plan a series of slides that progressively disclose your subject and your contribution. Build from cause to effect simple to more complex, question to answer. Take care not to bury your punch line in too much detail.
    
• A picture is worth 1000 words
  Ideas that preclude words are supported with pictures and graphs on the screen. To the eye you will give information about shapes, colors, surface qualities, and spatial relationships. To the ear, your presentation will provide the reasoning. The best technical talk is an effective mix of verbal and visual elements. Illustrate what you cannot verbalize, what would take too long to describe, or what you want to emphasize. Use slides to hold the attention, illustrate, clarify, restate, explain and interpret. Ears have trouble accepting numbers and abstractions. Numbers are easier to remember if they are written out. quantities and relationships must be visually compared. By adding illustrations to your spoken words, you add understanding to what you are saying and enliven interest in your presentation. Some graphic ways to make points clearly and quickly include:
  • Outline or overview slides
    Topic slides focus attention on key thoughts and orient the audience. An outline of major topics to be covered should be your opening slide. But be careful not to read it - the audience can do that without your help. Be brief but be sure you give the audience the proper orientation for the body of the talk
  • Trends
    Continuous line graphs show trends or correlations effectively. Be sure to label both X and Y axes. Make sure the graph has enough information to be understood without a lengthy explanation of its details - simply interpret it for the audience
  • Comparisons and proportions
    Bar graphs are best for comparing magnitudes. Pie charts are good for showing relative parts of the whole
  • Flow and relationship
    Simple flow charts or schematic diagrams can convey flow or relationships to be described. Show only those parts or details necessary to explain how a process works. Convey ideas with pictures rather than words if possible
  • Tabular data
    Avoid tables! Use graphs or charts instead. If you must use a table, include only items that you will mention. Use contrasting colored numbers to highlight significant data in tables. Include a leading zero when showing decimal fractions - .56 is easy to confuse with 56 while 0.56 will not be confused.
  • Blank slides
    Slides are an aid to your presentation and not the presentation itself. Avoid reading slides, keep the attention on the audience yourself. Sometimes, you might wish to digress from the topic of the current slide but do not want the audience distracted by the next one. If so, use a blank slide of a subdued color (black, dark blue or dark green, no white)
  • Maintain context
    Never say one thing visually on the screen and something else orally. The mind cannot readily accept such conflicting information even when both things are correct and related
  • More tips on making great graphics check out this link to OPUS.

Dealing with the limitations of electronic projection systems

• Keep slides simple and uncluttered
• Stick to the rule of "one idea per slide''
• Too much information prevents understanding and readability
• Break complicated slides into two or more
• Each slide should be used to communicate one major point
• Use large font sizes. 20 point and higher for regular text and 18 points for descriptive text (text with arrows, etc.)
• A good slide can be read by the naked eye at arms length with a good diffuse light source behind it
• A bold typeface works best
• Use fonts that display well at low resolution
• Sans serif fonts such as ``Helvetica/Arial'' work better than ones with detailed features such as "Times"
• Typically six lines of type should be the maximum per slide, and this applies to tables as well.
• Endeavor to only use horizontal slides. This allows us to fill the screen with the image. If you then put in a vertical slide, the top and bottom get cut off and if we adjust to the vertical, then all of your horizontals have to be projected smaller than the capacity of the screen.

Color tips

• The colors on a slide projector may be less distinct than they are on your computer monitor when you generate them
• Use contrasting brightness levels, e.g., light-on-dark or dark-on-light, in all of your text and diagrams. Yellow on dark blue or dark green is a standard that works very well
• The distinction between blues and reds for text and thin lines is especially weak, so try to avoid this combination
• Red filled-in objects (circles, rectangles, etc.) with white text are well-suited for highlighting
• Again be aware that the contrast of your computer monitor is much higher than that of a projector in a partly lit room

The color-blind can distinguish clearly between different light intensities, which is why one should always use light on dark and dark on light where possible. Printing your color presentation on a greyscale printer (don't use the black and white setting) will bring out problem areas, and these should be taken into consideration.

Practice before you Arrive

At the Meeting

As soon as you arrive, seek out your session chair who will appreciate knowing that you have arrived! The technical sessions will take place in the Conference Room, not the cafeteria or recreation room. You will speak from a lectern on a raised stage. The lectern is equipped with a surface for your notes, a reading light and a mechanical pointer. Typical Conference audiences range from 25 to 100 for technical sessions.

The chair will introduce each paper in order of the program. If by some chance a speaker is missing, the session chair will announce that fact and leave a hole in your session. Or use it for discussion of other papers and topics of importance

During the presentation

You have no more than 15 minutes for your presentation. It would not be fair to others if you go over your limit. Yes, it is a hard limit! It is also not good to finish too early, so work on the timing.

• Spend at least 30 seconds on each slide
  • Give the audience a chance to read the slide
  • Pause if necessary, to allow the audience to finish the slide
  • If you feel the need to flash by a slide quickly, then take it out! It isn't adding anything to your presentation
  • Only include outline slides at the beginning of a section if the sections are more or less evenly distributed, otherwise explain in words when you are moving on to a new area, with a brief pause to avoid the distraction of a fast slide
  • Duplicate any slides that are to be used more than once, don't go back to them

Presenting tips

Even with the best set of slides, you must present them effectively. Experienced presenters agree that rehearsing your talk a number of times is essential. Even the "pros" who have given hundreds of talks, and who seem so smooth and at ease, rehearse their presentations at least two or three times.

First, decide what you are going to say. Many presenters write out their talk first to get the words right. They read it a few times, practice it to themselves or in front of a mirror, then try it with their friends, or even their family. It is a good idea to try it out with your colleagues in a formal session. All will help you discover how listeners will react. They can tell you where to polish, where to put in another visual, when to explain a little more or when you are getting bogged down in detail.

Don't read your presentation. It will sound stilted and forced. However, sometimes it is a good idea to have the first few sentences written down to get you going. Practice your talk so that you can give it without seeing the slides - see them in your mind. If you have to turn to the screen all the time to see where you are, you will lose contact with your audience, and have problems with the microphone. Consider having a paper copy of the slides, with notes, on the lectern, especially if this will lessen your anxiety.

Find out how you sound. Record and play back your rehearsal. If you have access to a video recorder and camera, videotape it. Use the video camera or a mirror to observe your gestures, stance and facial expressions. Eliminate unwanted idiosyncracies, such as tapping the lectern, playing with the pointer or shuffling your feet. Use your hands to emphasize points. Vary your speaking level and intonation. Let your voice emphasize key points. Don't be a monotone. Pace your speaking rate to the familiarity of your subject. When introducing something new, slow down. As you reveal more of a subject you can speed up a little.

Remember that your talk is a combined verbal/visual presentation. At times, let the slides carry the message visually, but don't lean totally on the visual media. After the audience has had time to comprehend a slide and you are elaborating on a subject, it is most effective if you do not have the competition of the projected image. Use a blank slide at those points.

Prepare for the question period. Make a list of probable questions. This will help you to make a quick response. Some presenters even make up a slide or two for expected questions.

Keep in mind that you are speaking to an audience. Imagine yourself as being in that audience. You would appreciate a presentation that is clear and complete - communicated to you in conversational language. The audience is a group of professionals; all of them interested as demonstrated by their presence. But most are not well versed in your particular topic. They came to learn about it from you. Address your talk to them rather than to a small group of state-of-the-art colleagues. Your abstract and any published papers will be a permanent document and may be more detailed and formal.

• Begin by thanking your session chair
  After you have been introduced, begin by saying "thank-you to the moderator. More than just being courteous, it marks the beginning of your talk and captures the attention of the audience.
• Speak across slides
  Let your conversation flow across a slide boundary to the next slide. Lead in to it, as if you know what is coming (you'd better!). Pauses between every slide make the talk a "slide show" rather than an integrated presentation.
• Avoid talking "at" your slides
  Avoid phrases like "this slide shows" or "on this slide". Talk about the material on the slide, not the slide itself. Again, it becomes a "slide show" if you do.
• Be careful how you use the pointer
  You will have a mechanical pointer to identify features on your slides. Don't wave it around when you are not using it. If you might be nervous, rest it against the lectern. Remember with the backprojection screen laser pointers won't work well.
• Try to avoid nervous habits
  Don't bounce on your feet from side to side or wring your hands. If you feel nervous or don't know what to do with your hands, hold the lectern.
• Conclude your presentation with a point of punctuation
  Say "thank-you" forcefully, for example. This keys the audience that you have finished and they should applaud or wait for the session chair. It also cues the AV projectionist that he can dim the slides (if you prepared some specifically for possible questions--let the AV projectionist know in advance, so he doesn't switch carousels)
• Be prepared for 3 to 5 minutes of questions from the floor or Moderator
• Let the Moderator identify questioners for you, so that he can readily control the time
• Repeat the question before answering. You may hear it clearly, especially from someone near the front of the room facing you, but others at the back of the room need to know what was asked--this also helps give you a moment to frame your answer
  

After the Session

• Stay available for 15 minutes to answer any additional questions during the break (either a coffee break, lunch, or the end of the day)

More Help from the Web

Prepared by Bob Wattendorf based on Carla Otten, Presentation Consultant, 35th Design Automation Conference and based on the Speakers' Guide developed for the Cherry Hill International Test Conference. Their help is appreciated.

NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS

HOME	Introduction	Newsletters	Officers/ Committees	Charter/ Rules of Order
	Awards/ Scholarships	Meeting Notes	Photo Gallery	Links