Too many presentations, especially in academia, fail because the audience leave without understanding or remembering what was said. In many cases, people make slides without fully understanding who the audience of the talk is, and/or what the key points of their talk should be. Here are some simple tips, gained from experience of many presentations at different levels, that will hopefully help you add some shine to your presentations.

1. Adding polish to presentations
10 tips to make your talk shine
Keith Bradnam
# Author: Keith Bradnam, Genome Center, UC Davis
# This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
3.0 Unported License.
# 2012

2. 3 things that your talk should be

3. 1) Understandable
If people don’t understand it, what’s the point in them being there? A waste of time for them
*and* you.

4. 2) Memorable
People may understand what you’re talking about while you’re saying it, but if they forget it
right away then that’s not good either. You want your talk to be remembered by others, long
after you give it.

5. 3) Enjoyable
Many people never even think about making their talks enjoyable. It *may* be enough just to
present the facts, but if you can entertain people at the same time then why not do that as
well. Sometimes all this takes is showing a degree of passion.

6. What will be the best part
of your presentation?

7. Your results?
Your visual content?
Your spoken content?
Your sparkling personality?
Don’t just worry about the actual results/data that you have to present. The whole package is
important: the data, the slides, how you speak, and how your personality comes across.
Deficiencies in any one of these areas can make a dent in an otherwise good talk.

8. SLIDES
THE
PERFECT
TALK?
DELIVERY CHARISMA
Not many people make fantastic looking slides, and have a great style of public speaking,
*and* have bags of charisma to boot. Steve Jobs was one such person, and he’s a great
example of someone who gave flawless presentations time after time. Always the results of
practice and hard work.

9. Some things to consider
before you present

10. Things to do before your talk
Think & make notes Write plan Make slides Practice
20%
45%
10%
25%
Plan your talk *before* you fire up Keynote/Powerpoint! Think about what you want to say,
and what message your talk should have. Most importantly, allow time to practice your talk.
The above figures are approximately how much time I might devote to something like a lab
talk.

11. Who is your audience?
Preparation time Preparation time
Venue
(expected) (observed)
Lab talk 3–7 days 2–24 hours
Department
2–4 weeks 1–2 days
meeting
Conference
1–2 months 1–2 weeks
presentation
Preparation time obviously depends on the nature of the talk. The bigger the talk, the more
time you should allow. Most people prepare talks at the last minute, and/or work through the
night to get their slides finished. This is usually very obvious to the audience!

12. Two types of questions
TA L K
D
“That’s some really cool science...what does
OO
this mean for x, y, or z?”
G
“Could you clarify how you did...?”
TA L K
D
“What’s the rationale for doing...?”
B A
“Which program did you use to do...?”
“What species do you work on?”
“Was that RNA or DNA that you were using?”
Two types of questions can be asked at talks. The first category is a sign of a good talk. The
second category is a sign that your talk didn’t explain things in enough detail.

13. 10 tips for a better
presentation

14. 1) Be prepared
Things to do before your talk

15. Before your talk...
Research your presentation environment:
projector
computer
version of Powerpoint/Keynote
pointer?
microphone?
Don’t turn up and be disappointed to find out that they don’t have a computer capable of
handling your slides. Do you know if you have a lectern to stand at? Will you assume that a
pointer is available? Will the lighting in the room make your slides hard to read? You should
check all of these things in advance.

16. Before your talk...
Silence your cell phone
Have a plan B!
Save a PDF copy of talk
Put backup copy on flash drive and/or online
Could you do your talk without slides?
Don’t rely on one copy of your talk. All storage media can – and will – fail at some point. If
you really know your material, you should be able to fall back and give a good summary of
the material using a white board or even just from a spoken summary of the key points.

17. 2) Eliminate distractions
What don’t you want your audience to see?

18. If the first thing people see about your talk is all of the crud and mess that lives on your
computer, then you are already lowering expectations before you even open your mouth.

19. Typical slide during talk
Lots of bullet points
But you’re about to make a big point
Very important to keep focus
Don’t distract the audience at this point
Pop-up alerts in the middle of your talk? Classy, real classy.

20. Distractions
ON A MAC, USE A GUEST ACCOUNT!
Incoming Skype calls? Such things will happen if you don’t quit any application you don’t
need. On a Mac, simply turn on a Guest account and use that for your presentation. You can
guarantee there will be no other software which will interrupt your talk.

21. 3) Don’t mix styles
Choose one style and stick to it

22. Ugly slides
If you needlessly change your fonts between slides...
...or even within slides
And if you use lots of different colors
or font sizes...
It’s amazing how many people just throw slides together from different presentations. I call
this the ‘instant headache’ effect.

23. IT LOOKS UGLY!
Some color combinations will induce nausea.

24. Templates
Avoid out-of-date templates
Some color combinations are a good way to let people know that you first learnt how to use
Powerpoint circa 1995

25. A little more advice on
style
Only use a few font sizes
Be consistent with text alignment
It’s okay to change the font size to improve word
wrapping
Sentences that have just one word that wraps to another line can make slides look ugly. You
are not legally obliged to use the same font size for every slide. Sometimes bumping a font
down by one point is enough to eliminate word wrap.

26. A little more advice on style
Use only a few font sizes
Be consistent with text alignment
It’s okay to change the font size to improve word wrapping
The same slide, with some consistency.

27. Transitions
Is your talk divided into sections?
Will people know when you switch sections?
If you talk about more than one subject, or even if you have different sections to your talk
(which you probably should have), then will people know when you transition from one part
to another?

28. Next:
Mixing slides from
different presentations
Using a different colored/styled slide makes for an easy visual cue to your audience that you
have moved on. This is very useful if people in your audience were waiting for ‘the next
section’ and were not paying much attention to your opening slides. This can sometimes be a
place where you use slide animations effectively. I.e. only animate slides which indicate
transitions between sections

29. Older data from my boss
• My boss has some Interest in talk
results that use a 100
different slide template
75
• It has different colors
and fonts 50
• It might even contain 25
irrelevant data
0
• I’m too lazy to change it
1 2 3 4 5
Number of different slide designs
though
Don’t include slides from other presentations (e.g. from your boss or lab colleague) without
first changing the theme of the that slide to match the theme of your slides. Be prepared to
edit and remove objects from these slides which are no longer relevant to the point you are
making.

30. 4) Use images
We are visual creatures

31. Data
I studied conserved genes in:
Arabidopsis thaliana
Mus musculus
Xenopus tropicalis
Gallus gallus
Does your audience always need to read lists of things?

32. Data
I studied conserved genes in:
Arabidopsis thaliana
Mus musculus
Xenopus tropicalis
Gallus gallus
Wouldn’t the addition of some pictures make the slide more appealing?

33. Data
Maybe you don’t even need the text – you could still add text beneath pictures, but if there is
an opportunity to use a picture, use it! We are visual creatures and having images on slides
helps break up the monotony of the usual, text-heavy, talk.

34. Assessing methods of
genome assembly
Keith Bradnam
Korf Laboratory MONDAY 8/22/2011
Some people plaster their title slide with every piece of information they thing should go on
there. Usually these end up looking horribly cluttered.

35. Assessing methods of
genome assembly
Keith Bradnam
You could instead use a simpler opening slide...

36. Korf Laboratory, UC Davis Genome Center
...and then use a separate slide to let people know where you work. And this is another
example where you can easily throw in a pleasing picture.

37. Use a quotation
“It is not the strongest
of the species that
survives, nor the most
intelligent that
survives. It is the one
that is the most
adaptable to change.”
Set the scene for your talk if possible. Is there a quotation or passage of text that helps to
introduce the subject? People like to be eased in to subject matters with at least some
introduction/background. Setting the scene gets people thinking about your material before
you even show them any results.

38. Use a quotation
“It is not the strongest of
the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent
that survives. It is the one
that is the most adaptable
to change.”
And if you do have quotes, make sure that the person in the picture looks like they are
speaking the quote. This might require you to flip an image. This is not hard.

39. 5) Reduce bullet points
And reduce chance of people falling asleep

40. Death by bullet point
Some talks contain
so many bullet points
that it makes you
want to go out and
shoot something
Yawn.

41. Too short?
Download data
Process
Check
You had better explain such things very clearly, otherwise slides like this are redundant.

42. Too long?
Need to obtain sequence data from suitable
database in order to find set of intron sequences
A script was written to process sequences into
suitable data format (process_data.pl)
All species that were investigated had data sets
that did not produce any errors
Conversely, some people don’t like reading too much text. This still might be a preferred
option though if English isn’t your native language and you want to be sure people
understand you.

43. A happy compromise
Download intron data from GenBank
Process into new format
No species contained errors
Strike the right balance. Make sure what you say complements what’s on the screen, and
doesn’t just reproduce it verbatim.

44. 6) Avoid data overload
Only show what needs to be shown

45. If you reproduce figures from published papers (or other sources), you are not required to
show them all in one go.

46. MASKING USED TO HIDE PARTS OF IMAGE
Use image masks or crop images before you add them to your slide. Let people see just the
parts that they need to see.

47. ADD SHAPES TO HIDE PARTS OF IMAGE
Alternatively, hide out parts of the image using white shapes and reveal them one at a time.
This keeps the audience focused on one thing at a time.

48. Don’t look at the cheese
If you have lots of different things on one slide and they all appear at once, you will
immediately ensure that many of the audience will be looking at different things.
And I bet you looked at the cheese didn’t you?

49. FIGURE 2
When you present things in a series of events, this is a great opportunity to animate each
step.

50. I always use a wipe effect to reveal each element. In this case, the white rectangles that are
hiding the objects would be revealed with a ‘wipe downwards’ effect.

51. 7) Use your voice
You have an instrument, learn how to play it

52. ACTORS
Presenting science data requires you to be a little bit of actor. Adopt a stage persona if that
helps you. Most tips on acting apply to science presentations (project your voice, pause for
dramatic effect etc.)

53. SALESPEOPLE
Equally, you have to be something of a car salesmen. You are selling data and need to make
people understand why your results are important.

54. Tips for speaking
Vary pace & volume
Use pauses
Practice words you may be unfamiliar with
Avoid excessive reading of text
Be confident

55. Put people at ease
Remind people of timing
Let people know if they can interrupt
Tell jokes?
Tell anecdotes?
Don’t tell jokes if you are uncomfortable in doing so, and never say things which might be
considered inappropriate. But a little levity goes a long way. If you are having a good time
when you present your talk, this will come across to the audience.

56. 8) Content
How do you choose what to say?

57. Anatomy of a talk
Introduction Background Results Summary
2%
5%
10%
15% 8%
25%
55%80%
Most people cram their talks full of results and leave little room for anything else.

58. Background material
Make sure you include sufficient background!!!
Make sure background is appropriate to audience
This is my number one problem with most science talks. Speakers are not respectful of the
audience and dive straight into what they did without first setting the scene.

59. This good guy (Luke Skywalker) finds out that
this bad guy (Darth Vader) is really his dad.
But Luke still
becomes a Jedi and
kicks his dad’s ass to
piss off the Emperor
And the good guys blow up this
Death Star thing and crush the evil
Empire. Yay, the good guys win.
The End.
Imagine if someone described the Star Wars trilogy without making reference to the first film
(Star Wars, episode III). This film is necessary to set up the whole story and make us
sympathetic to the protagonists. Similarly, your talk should include a section which sets up
your results.

60. 9) Have a plan
Do you know how to get from A to B?

61. Tell a story
If you plan your talk before you make your slides you are much more likely to come up with a
better flow to your whole presentation. It should have a beginning, middle, and end. Good
talks even set up drama by revealing problems, and then add a resolution (how you overcame
the problem).

62. Less is sometimes more
TIME
Talk 1 Talk 2 Talk 3
Result 1 Result 2 Background
Result 2 Result 1 Result 2
Result 3 Result 3 Result 3
Result 4 What this means What this means
Where this is Where this is
Result 5
going going
Too many talks are like Talk 1. All results. Talk 3 may contain less data, but the results will
be discussed in the appropriate context and people will be more likely to remember the talk.

63. Make your talk flow
The order in which you produced results is not
necessarily the order in which you present results!

64. Have a goal
What are the key ‘take home’ messages?
If you don’t know what they are...
...your audience won’t either
As you plan your talk, and as you make your slides, always ask yourself ‘why should the
audience care about any of this?’

65. 10) Practice!
People will notice if you haven’t practiced

66. What to practice?
Timing
Opening words (of talk and/or each slide)
How to say unfamiliar words
Run through entire talk (vocally)
If you are new to public speaking, it will really, really show if you don’t practice. Practicing is
not the same thing as spending 5 minutes running through your slides. You should recite the
talk to learn how long it takes.

67. Learn to use software
Do you know how to use Powerpoint/Keynote?
Do you really know to use them?
Can you:
mask/crop an object?
align all objects to an edge
rotate objects by exactly 90º?
animate an object along a custom path?
Knowledge of what your presentation software is capable of can really help you be much
more efficient in putting slides together.

68. Practice, practice, practice!
Practice rehearsing your talk as you will give it
Check every slide, animation, and transition
Get feedback from friends/colleagues
Be prepared to edit and refine slides
Know your talk inside and out
If you don’t practice your talk, then I refuse to be friends with you. Do you know your
material so well you could run through your talk without the slides? Can you ad lib on topics
related to, but not included in, your main subject matter?

69. Giving talks for 2nd time
Still need to practice!
Things change (data, background material etc.)!
You’ll have new ideas about your talk
You can always make a talk better
Don’t assume that because you have made a set of slides, that you will never need to change
things if you present the same talk again. Audiences differ, your results may have changed,
the background material may have changed, and you may have better ideas of how to
explain/present your data...all of these things mean that you should always go through every
slide and make changes if appropriate.

70. Summary

71. Giving a talk is easy
Giving a good talk is hard
Giving a great talk is difficult!
Don’t ever assume it will be easy. Great presentations happen because of great presenters.
And presenters become great through hard work and practice.

72. One great talk could change
your career forever...
...so take the time to make
every talk fantastic.
If you give a talk at a conference, the audience may contain your future employer or grant/
manuscript reviewer! Treat every talk like it is the last talk you’ll ever give.

73. The End.
# Author: Keith Bradnam, Genome Center, UC Davis
# This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
3.0 Unported License.