Tag: speaker

Ad Lagendijk Ad Lagendijk 3 November 2008

Types of presentations

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Posted in Presentations quality, Tips for junior scientists, Tips for senior scientists

In my book I classify scientific presentations according to the following scheme:

a)  speaker has no goal apparently
b)  speaker wants to prove he is smarter
than anybody in the audience
c)  speaker wants to give listeners a flavor
of new developments in his field
d)  speaker wants to teach some new
science to the listeners.

In the book I discuss talks of type a), b) and d) to some length, but I say noting about talks of type c). The basic reason being that talks of this type are very difficult to deliver.

Flavor of new developments
If you do not talk to specialists and you do want to drown your audience you have a very difficult task. In the first place be honest to your audience how difficult the subject is. Feynman says in his set of lectures
QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter about calculating (Feynman) diagrams: “It takes seven years to train our physics students to be able to do that trick.”
So you must separate those concepts that your audience can understand and those they cannot understand. Make clear that it is not your intention to impress them and that they must accept the fact that a number of things you present they cannot understand (you can make them plausible, though). Furthermore be very modest. Do not overload them with too much new information.