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

To this list, I'd add one more thing: pay attention to talks that you see, writing notes not just on the material, but on things you liked and disliked about the presentation style, the slide format, etc. Avoid the things you dislike, and employ the things you like.

This applies to all manner of things.

You may notice that speakers who talk to the screen are unengaging. So avoid doing that.

You may notice that strong speakers have a moment near the beginning when they grab the attention of the audience, and that this makes it easy to stay awake for the whole talk. So try to find a way to do that -- a way that fits with your own work, of course.

You will certainly notice that talks that go overtime make for a terrible experience for everybody. So don't do that. (You'll need strategies. The simplest is to have "landing points" in the talk, so that if you see that time is running short, you can skip some material to get to a landing point. Obviously, the conclusions slide ought to be a landing point.)

And so on. Learn from the impression that other speakers make on you.

I've used this approach for slides and websites. Any time I see a great design, I'll take a screenshot and save it in a folder called "PowerPoint/Web Ideas". I'll even include some shots from typography style music videos. Then whenever I have some free time and am bored, I'll try to recreate it in PowerPoint.

Most of the designs are TOO MUCH for teaching slides, but its fun practice since making slides is sort of my job. But the practice gives me a better understanding of what I can do with presentations, building templates, messing with color theory, etc. There's a science/art to making a good lecture presentation and I'm enjoying the artistic expression, while still being educational task.