Guidelines for Lecture Presenters

You will certainly want slides to be made. Remember that the preparation of slides takes (a lot of) time.

Follow the guidelines given in the paragraph 5 “Preparation of slides”. It may mean the difference between delivering a successful presentation or a rather incomprehensive presentation.

Keep slides simple, both diagrams and formulae. Make sure that the slides really fit the text as spoken. Don’t use the illustrations from the written paper as slides. Generally they require significant time to understand.

A poor slide is not better than no slide at all: it is far worse than no slide at all. A poor slide will embarrass the audience and later embarrass you!
Someone will have the courage to tell you!

Avoid the use of too many slides: 10 is quite a lot, 20 may affect the timing of your 15 minutes presentation.

There is a great difference between “writing” and “reading” a paper as far as the contents are concerned. The reading of a “written paper”, or of parts of it, hardly ever gives satisfactory results. A written paper is usually compact, providing a relatively high density of detailed information, exact formulation and derivation or formulae. Little redundancy is allowed, but literature references and cross-references are permitted. If, however, for some reason “reading” a text is unavoidable, e.g. because of language difficulties, then this text should be specially prepared with a view to oral presentation.

In an oral presentation the speaker has the opportunity to present his information in a conversational style. By far the best way is to discuss the topics using only a set of notes containing the essential points, instead of reading a text.

It is a good idea to make these notes on a set of cards as used in card files. In order for the lecture to begin smoothly and for you to reach a clear conclusion, completely write out the opening and the closing sentences. Elsewhere, try to suffice with short notes.

Remember: you are the expert in the room on the topic that you are going to discuss.

A lecture ought to contain three parts:

• The introduction, stating explicitly the topic of the lecture (perhaps 3 minutes);
• The main body;
• The conclusions, summarising the lecture (perhaps 3 minutes).

The total amount of time allocated per lecture will be 15 minutes, plus 5 minutes time for discussions. Because of time limits only main topics can be treated; they should be in an easily understandable – not very mathematical – form.

For derivations of formulae and less important details one should refer to the proceedings; as in an oral presentation the introduction of the terms, definitions and symbols may be relatively lengthy, in order for the audience to become familiar with them (the listener cannot look back as it is the case when reading a written contribution).

It is far better to treat a few subjects in a clear and comprehensible way than many subjects in a hurry. As the proceedings have been distributed among the participants, authors should certainly not try to present the full text of their papers. They should concentrate rather on a short formulation and motivation of the problem being discussed and on the obtained results.

After these preparations you should feel confident about presenting your work. The only thing that remains to be done is to try out the presentation (including the use of slides) with some co-workers and on a camcorder. If you will speak in a language that is not native to you, then try to get some feedback on that aspect too. For example, mispronunciations (e.g. “angel” instead of “angle”) may spoil the whole performance.

Be aware of the time limit. It requires much skill (or training and self-discipline) to stick to the allocated time. The session chairmen will advise you to come to an end, and if necessary, will stop your presentation.