Art of the scientific talk - the basics.
Keys to a killer scientific talk
Fresh from undergrad, clutching my B.S. in Biology, I moved out to Arizona to teach high school. While not my original plan, as a single mom, I needed to make some money. The biggest lesson I learned working with at risk kids in AZ was how to put on a show, in all honesty, you had to be willing to just put yourself out there and learn to laugh at yourself. This knowledge, while not immediately helpful in graduate school, seemed key to scientific presentation. I was lucky enough I found my scientific 'home' with an amazing advisor. She was tough, and I was terrified of disappointing her, but she is a superb scientific communicator and I learned so much. With this in mind (and a pending presentation to help my fellow post-docs hone/develop their presentation skills), I thought I'd begin my science blogging. So here goes...
The key to a 'hit it outta the park' talk is telling a story. We've all seen those talks, were it all just flows and even if the data isn't perfect, there will be heads together and people will remember it because it was a well told story. Scientists do themselves a disservice by not wrapping their data in a pretty bow. For some scientists, this means leaving out negative data. But please don't, in my experience, negative data helps develop the story and can be used as background or as a transition.
Let's start out with three guidelines for a good talk.
1. Tell a story! A story has a beginning, a middle and an end - keep this in mind. Many scientists seem to want to show every piece of data they have (who doesn't want acknowledgement for all those long nights and weekends of work), but ask yourself if that piece of data adds to the story. Is it needed to understand your main point?
2. Each slide (or point), should follow my advisor's favorite adage - tell 'em what your gonna tell em, tell 'em and tell 'em what you told 'em. This sounds like it would get repetitive, but people get distracted and need these cues to really understand a talk.
3. Slides should be well laid out (easy to follow), uncluttered and not too wordy. (you should NOT read your slides to people)
4. Practice, practice, practice! We always practice in front of our lab a few times and we are brutally honest. Its much better to hash out your weaker points with friendly faces than end up in front of a large audience and have them pointed out. Its frustrating, hair pulling, need-a-large-beer afterward type of thing, but its essential and throughout my graduate training, I always felt prepared and was praised for my presentations.
First question is how much time do you have. Is it a 10-minute talk at a conference with 2-minutes for questions? Half an hour (25 min with 5 for questions)? Hour (50 min with 10 for questions)?
General guideline: 12 min talk = 1 point, half hour = 1 or 2 very related points, one hour = 1 or 2 well developed points.
Second question is who is your audience. Experts in your field, fellow researchers in your department, general audience of scientists?
Your audience will guide your 'background' info part of the talk and depending on who you are presenting to, you may need to detail your techniques.
Here are a few slides from my ASV (American Society of Virology) talk from a few years ago - the data is already published. These slides are part of a 10-minute presentation and the audience was mainly fellow reovirus researchers. Since I was presenting later in the session, and I knew most of the presenters before me, I didn't feel the need to add much background. I was only able to do this because most people in the reovirus field stay in the room for the entire session and we don't draw too many 'outsiders' - though people really should come, the reovirus sessions really has some of the best presenters and well thought our science - I'm only a little bias...
This slide follows my very brief introduction/background slide. This gives specific background information about my talk. Again, its short and sweet.
This slide details my question and my hypothesis. This was, I believe, only my second talk at ASV and the first time that a respiratory model was presented.
Finally, we get to the data. This is a very basic set up. Question, data and conclusion. I usually animate in the conclusion so I can spend time verbally walking the audience through the data. This follow the 'beginning, middle and end' I mentioned before. Keep in mind that not every slide needs to have all that on it, you just need to make sure you have every part for each point you are trying to make.
I was taught to always memorize short talks - you don't have time to use many cues or use presenter view. Practice, practice, practice! The slide to the write details everything I planed to say on this particular slide. Some points of the slide were animated in (just use appear - nothing crazy), so the audience wasn't on the same image for too long. The planned wording is edited many times before I ever even practice the talk out loud. Wording in science is very precise, so you need to plan your words carefully. You can see that I highlight/bold many words and sometimes even write out where I need to pause...may be a bit much, but helps when I am memorizing.
Here are some select slides from my Ph.D. defense I had about an hour and the audience was mainly other scientists from my department and graduate program. These types of talks you can't memorize, but its still really good to memorize the transitions so you can look at the audience while you deliver them. Layout of your slides is really key - you use them to walk the audience through the data.
This was the slide immediately after my title slide. Its the typical guidepost slide, which is often placed after the background. I used it here to set up where I began in the lab and to show what I had accomplished.
You DO NOT need to use an 'outline' slide for shorter talks! Its a waste of a slide and since you are focused on one point, there is no need to have this detail.
These slides help walk everyone through the reovirus life cycle. I generate all the parts of this in powerpoint myself and use the clipart, especially the viruses, throughout the presentation.
This final set of slides from my Ph.D. defense details the beginning middle and end (minus the conclusion slide). This set of experiments were particularly complicated, so I used transition slides liberally to help detail the experiments.
I set out to make a guide of scientific presentation for my lab mates, but thought this would be a great blog post. Hopefully my first foray into this type of blogging will help a few people looking for ideas for their presentations! And for all you immunologists out there - I'm begging you - don't put 9 facs plots on the same slide and expect us to understand your main point!
I'm sure many people out there have further tips and tricks they use when presenting, send them my way! I'm always looking for new ideas!
Now I'm off to prep for my little sisters wedding! Hoping for no rain!
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