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- Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!torn!utzoo!henry
- From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
- Subject: thoughts for paper presenters
- Message-ID: <C0G07x.DAM@zoo.toronto.edu>
- Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 17:21:32 GMT
- Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
- Lines: 29
-
- In a continuing effort to make Usenix papers more worth listening to :-),
- some thoughts for the presenter, especially the first-time presenter...
- (These are my own opinions as a long-time attendee and sometime presenter,
- and don't necessarily reflect the views of Usenix or anybody else.)
-
- Run through your talk at least once in advance so you know how long it
- will take. It probably needs to be cut down. My talks usually need to
- be cut by at least a factor of two. Doing this in advance is far superior
- to improvising when you discover you only have five more minutes.
-
- Say something interesting. If you're short of time, pick one subtopic
- and say something interesting about it, and forget the rest. Few things
- annoy an audience more than hearing "well, the rest of that's in the paper"
- every two minutes. Especially since it usually comes just as you were
- starting to talk about something in enough detail to actually be worth
- listening to. If there isn't time to cover everything well, *don't try*.
- (This is especially true if you find yourself *unexpectedly* short of
- time. Dashing through half a dozen topics in five minutes means you
- can't say anything interesting about any of them.)
-
- Say something your competitors would find fascinating. If they wouldn't
- find your talk interesting, the rest of the audience probably won't either.
-
- Plan your slides for visual content. Pictures should be worth a thousand
- words. If a slide doesn't make sense shown backwards, it has too many
- words and not enough picture -- take it out.
- --
- "God willing... we shall return." | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
- -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
-