Thursday, March 5, 2009

$QR$ Presentation

I finally finished my GPGPU '09 presentation. I need to script it and make sure I can present all 45 slides in 20 minutes. Some of them are closer to animations than "view graphs" so the actual number of slides I'd spend more than a few sentences on is lower.

How do you guys prepare for presentations?

Word-for-word scripting, bullet points you remember to mention in the context of a larger discussion you have with your audience, mix Adderall and a vodka tonic shortly before the presentation and hope for the best? Comment!

6 comments:

sstc said...

45 slides seems awfully large for 20 min. Does the 20 min include questions? (even if not, its going to be tight) Are you talking during the animation to walk them through it?

To prepare, I present it in my head a few times, (you can go through it faster) to figure out pacing and volume of talking on each slide.

Then you gota go over it out loud, to see if you got it right. If I am really crunched for time, I type the narrative out, and print it, so that I can read it in nervous times before the talk. Otherwise, I would rather have a set of stuff to say in bullet form that is not on the slides. (I use the \note form to keep it all in the presentation and print a note version of the slides)

Good thing is, you don't have a hostile audience, they want to see how cool you are.

Sara said...

I definitely do the whole thing out loud, standing up with the finished slides. Hearing the content in your head vs. hearing it come out your mouth often can be very different.

On certain presentations, I also keep backup/detail slides if you don't have time to describe in the main 20 minutes, but could prove helpful in the questions section.

I also concur with Joe that it is best practice to keep some summarized version of your main points in paper version in front of you (only) in case you get lost.

It helps that you really know the content. It's much harder when you are constantly wondering if you are presenting the content inaccurately.

Best of luck :-)....what day do you present?

~ps: I'd avoid the vodka unless you are feeling really adventurous! :)

Unknown said...

I like to script the whole thing out word for word. I rarely need it, but if I get totally lost for a moment, then my ass is covered.

And jack in coke is way better than the vodka.

:-)

sstc said...

rum and coke is the drink of champions.

Spatchcock said...

Rum and coke is the drink of common people . . . evidently.

sstc said...

i think you misread it.

It says that some hot chick was offering to buy him a drink, then mentions that she is RICH, so he upgrades to a rum and coke, drink of champions.