Before you prepare a presentation, you should know your audiance well. The following suggestions are meant to provide you some tips preparing presentations. They are not silver bullets. Keeping on practice whenever you get a chance is the key.
NCSU logo: You can find approved options here: my.ece.ncsu.edu/communications/branding
Outline of a Technical Presentation
Title page:
Please include logos of NCSU and FREEDM and the logo of your funding agency.
Use a format provided by the conference or by NC State or by FREEDM center.
Including a date and prepared for XXX
Include the information of your teammates
Outline
Background (why you do what you do?)
Overview (An architecture of your work)
Technical Approach (state of the art and your approach)
Modeling Methods
What data sets/model/tool you used?
What assumptions you have made?
What is the existing algorithm, what is the improvement made in your algorithm. Highlight the differences in the flow charts and formulars?
Please use insert formulars to make sure all your variables are written correctly in a formal Math style.
All figures should be correctly labeled and eligible.
What are the case studies you set up to test and verify your results?
Modeling Results
Provide comparison with other ongoing efforts or among different cases
Use tables and figures and highlight what is unquie or why your results show your method is superior than the other ongoing efforts
Don't use pages of text. Be clear and concise and try to describe the results with the aid of a table or figure.
Label figures/tables and don't forgot the units
Conclusions
Future Work
References
Acknowledgement
Q&A
How to prepare a presentation
When you prepare a presentation, it is important that you get into the habit to write a script (or talking points) for your talk. Especially when you have to make a transition from one speaker to another, you would like to summarize the privious presenters talk and point out the links wiht your presentation materials.
An example:
In the following slides I will introduce to you XX we developed for the XXX project. This tool is developed on XX and we are going to test it on XX. As YYY has shown in his slides, after we receive XXX model, if we have XXX, we can do ZZZ. Then, based on XXXX, we can do XXX and YYY. This will help us design more realistic PV penetration scenarios.
We have already designed and tested a number of control methods to control X, Y, Z, and ZZ that can be used to _____. For example, we can control X so that . Or, we can control Y to do Z. To compare the performance of those methods, we have developed a set of performance criterions as shown in this slide. Based on how well the criterions are met, we can derive the equivalency among those methods. This can be used in our value propersition studies for ____ to compare the effectiveness of different ways to do XXX.
The next two slides show the tool we developed based on the methods we introduced in prior slides. We can select ____ and set _____. Then we can display the modeling results in time series plots or tables that summarize their operation statistics. Traditional ___ based approaches can only do _____ and the results are ______, so it will either over- or under- estimate the potential problems. Our methods will cover a much wider range of _ combinations. After we run hundreds or thousands of scenarios, we can come up with a confidence level based results. For example, we can run a yearly or multi-year study and tell how often ___ occur or how often ___.
This is not a perfect script but you can work on it to make it smooth and include all the important messages you would like to convey to the audiance. Developing a script for your presentations is a good way to organize your thoughts and make your presentation skills improve faster in the long run. This will also help you improve your thinking process - as once you put it on paper, you find connections between random thoughts. I definitely don't recommend you to memorize the scripts and recite it word by word when you present your slides, but I believe that after you practice a few times, you will more or less start to use a more consistant way to present your results. Using this method to prepare for a job talk is especially important, as you will be nervous and you will not do well unless you have go over every detail in your slides and ask yourself all the questions you would have asked.
Check List
Always dress up and show passion in what you are presenting. If you feel the material is boring yourself, the audience can tell.
Don't block the screen when you are presenting. Move around or back and forth from the screen is fine but don't wandering around like you are lost.
Get used to stand straight and avoid sudden movement. Have eye-contact to both sides of your audience. Don't play with pens, pointers, etc in your hands. Try not to use your fingers point to a figure in a slide - use a pointer or a mouse to guide the audience to the part of slide that you want them to focus on. If you are nervous, try not to use a pointer.
Time yourself well. Cut the number of slides down to the number you can handle so you don't have to rush yourself through slides. Rank the importance of the slides so you can skip those less important slides in case time is up.
Describe your slides with a clear order. For example, go over a figure from left to right or top to bottom. Don't flip over slides by arranging your slides in a forward sequence. Copy the slide to the next page if you need to use a previously used slide again.
Ask if they have questions when you finish a section. Speak loud enough so people in the last row can hear you.
Use a few transition words and avoid using one over and over again.
(In the first section, I will introduce ABC, then, I will go over X and Y, after that, I will show you a few case studies that show the performance of XY. )
Avoid use informal languages such as: you guys, you know, this thing, that thing,
Avoid using filler words such as en, ah, ahm.
If you don't know what to say just look at the slides and say: this is a good question. Then, pretend you are thinking of it or try to think a way out of it :-). It is fine to say, we haven't considered it in our study but we will include that in our future work. Thanks for the suggestion/comment.
Don't read your slides, especially formulas, numbers, or variables. Just compare them or refer to variables as their true representations.
min 3x+4y+35: When minimizing the profit, the objective function is show here.
t--- time; p---say power don't say p I think this makes your speech more descriptive.
$36541 and $78324: just say we received twice as much profit using the second method. Or the profit is doubled using the second method.
Use analogies for hard-to-understand-concepts so that the audience with less technical background can relate it to something they are familiar with.
Label you figuresHighlight no more than three key points in one figure.
Avoid crowded slides and avoid use more colors than needed.
Preferred font types: Arial/Calibri
Use font size > 16
Avoid using acronym as much as possible.
Label your figures well and put units on the figure.
Avoid using the same title for many slides
Answering Questions
Always be polite and show good manner.
When you know the answer, just answer it and go straight to the point. Don't rambling for minutes.
When you don't know the answers, tell the audience that you are going to look into it
If an audience keeps on asking un-related topics, politely say this is an interesting question and worthy of further discussion. Let's talk off line after the presentation
If an audience gets hostile, just calm down and delay the discussion to a future time. Never get mad at your audience in public even though you hate someone biting you so hard for no reason :-)
If you find a discussion really helpful, do follow up with the question
Take notes of the questions. It helps you learn how to ask good questions and taking care of them will improve your work too.
Don't answer questions in a way it leads to more questions. So avoid controversial statements.
Repeat a question when you don't understand it or you cannot hear it clearly.
Pause a few seconds will not hurt you if it is a tough question
How to prepare an update of you project
Slide 1: You would like to provide a reminder of what has been done at last meeting. what was expected for your to accomplish this week?
Slide 2: Then you show what you have done between last meeting and now.
Slide 3: What will be done next week
Slide 4: Where you are at now based on the time schedule, any questions any delays, any additional requests.
How to prepare a topic
Slide 1: what is the topic? (explain what are you going to solve. Problem description)
slide 2: Why this topic (background, state-of-the-art, existing problems, if this problem is solved what can be improved)
slide 3: Approach: