
How to make sure your talk doesn't suck (2011) [pdf] - fanf2
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/talks/talk.pdf
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bjterry
The biggest signal of someone being an amateur when speaking (or writing) is
discussion of the process of creating the presentation. Polished professional
speakers don't talk about "when I started writing working on this
presentation, I wasn't sure how to talk about X." They just put together a
presentation describing the result or topic and present it without talking
about all the work that it took to create. The process of creating it seems
very salient and novel to the creator at the time of creation, but the
audience doesn't care.

People who are nervous or give public talks only rarely will regularly fall
into this trap. I think it's related to self-handicapping in presentations,
but is distinct, and I have not seen it mentioned in looking at a few
"presentation pitfalls" articles.

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chubot
Yeah, this happens in writing too. Steven Pinker has a great name for it:
"self-conscious style" (in the book _The Sense of Style_ ). That's where you
insert yourself into the text in a way that's irrelevant to the subject
matter.

He instead advocates that you write in "classic style", which is basically
talking about X, as you say. There is something in the world, and I am going
to show it through words.

He also talks about the "academic style" of writing, and has some funny
examples of it. One big part of that is obscuring the prose so that you can
never be proven wrong.

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thicknavyrain
Pleased, but not surprised, to see the thought and effort Tong puts into
communicating ideas. His notes on Quantum Field Theory are still an excellent
go-to introduction for masters students and sheds light on a number of
otherwise tricky to pin down ideas and topics. And, somehow, makes them seem
comprehensible and straightforward for the must part.

As for this, the bit about never going over time is incredibly valuable
advice, and one I /still/ see regularly ignored, often flagrantly, in Physics
seminars.

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gnufx
Good advice, obviously, but there are different types of practice. I was
always grateful that, amongst other things, my (wider) research group had
weekly meetings with talks, mostly from students who were all expected to do
it to get practice and friendly feedback. The next level up was a national
conference, where you got the chance to do a short talk in a sympathetic
atmosphere, where it was frowned on to be hard on students. It was common to
rehearse talks for major meetings in front of the group too for comments.

I've been horrified on occasion subsequently to see students thrown in
completely cold to give important talks, including at major international
meetings.

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southerndrift
The link to the article on slide 26:

Suggestions For Giving Talks \- Robert Geroch (Enrico Fermi Institute)

[https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9703019](https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9703019)

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andrewflnr
For beginning speakers, I feel the number one piece of advice is to practice
the talk. Practice to an empty room if necessary, all the way through. If
you're like me, it's extremely painful the whole time, but I always regretted
not practicing enough.

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harmless39
I agree. My rule for my own preparation is to practice out loud, end to end,
10 times. After 3 it always seems pointless, but I don't let myself off the
hook. If I know my audience and my message - I can actually think on my feet
and answer questions with respectful consideration. YEMV. Good luck to anyone
public speaking.

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hsivonen
Telling people to use a laser pointer instead of a mouse pointer is terrible
advice.

Design slides to work without a pointer. If you can't, use a magnified mouse
pointer.

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thatoneuser
Lasers work fine and you’re always able to have a functioning laser pointer.
The same cannot be said for any mouse type device.

