A long guide to giving a short academic talk (2022)

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

Obviously it's both. If you have something worthwhile to say, but say it poorly, people will find it difficult to care. Similarly, if you have nothing important to say, but present it in an engaging manner, people will be interested at first, but will cotton on to the lack of intellectual content pretty quickly.

To make a lasting impact you need both.

Most conferences I've attended are so boring that I'd take an engaging speaker saying nothing over a poor speaker presenting something of consequence.

There's really nothing I like about attending conferences and probably 1 in 100 speakers are both engaging and presenting something of value. The vast majority of them seem to be there to promote their latest book. Yet my employer seems to think they are important.

For me, conferences are about:

- The hallway track

- Having some less-distracted time around some general topic of interest

- Being made aware of things I might not have otherwise been made aware of

But, by and large, you're not IMO going to "learn about $X" by going to a breakout. It might put $X on your radar as something worth spending a day looking at.

By and large, I like (selectively) going to conferences but if someone has the mindset that they're a day of classroom-type sessions, they're probably less valuable. That's not a criticism. People just have different perspectives.