Conferences & Education & People & Tips and tools Andrew Kun on 31 Jan 2008 05:23 pm
Giving a great research talk: presentations by John Krumm and colleagues
The most memorable conference talks I’ve ever heard were given by John Krumm. John is a researcher at Microsoft Research, and he works on measuring the location of people and utilizing this information in a way beneficial to people. There are multiple things that make his talks great, but one thing that certainly makes them memorable is that John uses humor very effectively. E.g. in one talk John made fun of sponsorship deals by including fake sponsor messages on slides.
In July 2007, John and three of his Microsoft Research colleagues, Patrick Baudisch, Mary Czerwinski and Richard Szelinski organized a session at Microsoft Research on how to give a great presentation for a job interview or a conference presentation. The video of this session is available here. Here are the pictures of the four speakers:
Here are some of the ideas from the session that I really liked. All of the presenters (with the exception of Patrick Baudisch) underscored the importance of practice. I couldn’t agree more. All of them also agreed that visuals (pictures and videos) are an excellent way to create a good presentation.
John Krumm also pointed out that the presentation has to bring people up to speed on what you’re doing, without assuming that they already know the intricate details of your area. Most people don’t and they will be lost without your help. Patrick Baudisch recommends taking pictures of your work from beginning to end (e.g. take pictures of messy prototypes). This will provide you with a large collection of photos to use in an exciting presentation.
Rick made an excellent point about which part of our work has the largest impact - it is not the code we write, it is the presentation we make, since that’s what will touch the largest number of people (say at a conference). So, it makes sense to put a lot of effort into the presentation. Mary gave interesting suggestions about how to deal with rude questions. Above all, she recommends staying humble. I can remember at least one occasion where I really could have used this advice.
Take a look at the video (it’s about 75 minutes long). It’s well worth watching, probably multiple times. You can see that I’ve learned something from it: I included the photos of the speakers above. Visuals matter!
Andrew Kun
on 01 Feb 2008 at 11:51 am 1.John Krumm said …
Thank you for your kind words, Andrew. We organized this session for the summer interns at Microsoft Research. I really do believe in the value of practice. I practiced this talk six times before I gave it to an audience.
on 01 Feb 2008 at 9:49 pm 2.Nemanja Memarovic said …
I really liked the presentation. Everything that was said I tend to put into practice. Patrick Baudisch talked about visualization and coloring of the slides. For now I have only one presentation in the US (NECHFES) and I used dark blue as background, which I think is wrong from what Patrick said. I would like to learn more about rules or suggestions on what colors to use and more important number of colors per slide. Is there a possibility to send my presentation and get a review on it?
Thanks for the presentation,
Nemanja
on 07 Feb 2008 at 11:23 am 3.zeljko.medenica said …
This was an excellent presentation. It really gave me some ideas how to organize my future presentations. Last year I had a chance to attend many conferences, and saw that there are so many researchers out there who don’t know how to present their work properly. I think that this way, even if it was an interesting research, it will probably remain unnoticed since it didn’t attract enough attention during the presentation.
on 11 Feb 2008 at 11:32 am 4.Andrew Kun said …
Zeljko, any specific ideas you liked?
on 19 Feb 2008 at 3:16 pm 5.Erika Clifford said …
Great presentation skills take time and a lot of practice to achieve. This presentation shows that good presenting is an art form. I have used most of these ideas when I have presented. My favorites are story telling, humor, and having people ask questions throughout the presentation. I really liked their suggestions for using less words and more pictures, demos etc. to catch the audience attention. I find myself reading ahead when I can see everything on the slide and only half listening to what is said…whereas pictures would peak my interest and force me to listen to what is being said! Also in listening to the different ideas for presentation style/format the ideas highlight the fact that there is no one way to present and creativity in presenting strengthens the chances of having a great presentation.