Some notes on giving a research presentation (from the class I took, taught by my advisor in Fa24)

• determine your audience first
  • their level of knowledge of the topic
  • audience should understand everything in your talk (especially for conference talks)
• determine the story before making slides
  • answer why you are doing/done this work?
    • key takeaway and motivation
    • tell why the audience should care about your presentation
• setup story and make everything go back to it
  • establish goals early and refer back to them
  • establish a setting
  • don’t put anything that is random
• setup the problem early and let people know why they should care
  • explain why if the audience already doesn’t know why
• show, don’t tell
  • use visuals; text is boring (how about no text at all to start with)
• don’t make the audience think
  • they don’t want to think about
    • why your work is important
    • any interpretations of figures or graphs
    • also lay down key assumptions
  • what they will think
    • limitations
    • implications
    • connections to their own work
  • surprises are bad
    • give why before what
  • always explain figures and graphs
  • one point per slide, one point per section
    • every section/slide/figure should have a single purpose
  • The slide title itself should tell you the point
  • be precise
• end on a positive note
  • emphasize future work and show a vision for the future