Notes from the biomass

Giving good presentations is easy. I have read all about it, practiced it many times and even won a presentation contest against half of the info elite of Berlin (n=10, once). Surprisingly, I occasionally find myself in front of an audience stuttering and apparently inept to close a single sentence appropriately. I appear to be utterly unprepared even when this is the seventh time I tell my little story about bugs and yeasts. As presenting ones work will be a regular activity of the rest of my life, I’ve been asking myself what to do about it for some time and found a little trick that has done me well often (n=3).

Listening to colleagues or seeing a scientist at conferences again and again, it seems that many people’s presentation skills vary dramatically by time, too; hence the hope that this post will reach others could put it to use.

It’s no secret: You need to start your delivery on the strong end, not only is it the first impression that your audience gets of you (or your colleagues of your new idea). Often enough, I find my grip only halfway through the slides. Even more importantly, sentences flow easily if the first three of five are on target. However, those are often the hardest and one typically starts presenting after sitting silently in an auditorium for hours or following up on the good ideas that you had while preparing the talk.

Therefore, I am trying to get a flying start whenever I can by grabbing an unsuspecting subject that doesn’t talk back too much and start an abbreviated presentation one-to-one without the slides just outside the lecture theater or seminar room. Science conferences typically have a session chair that you can finally put to use if there’s a coffee break before your talk but you can just as well coerce an interested student into receiving an advance on your presentation. You just need to reset the presentation but instead of having waited anxiously at the start of your talk, you have practised, have your head in the subject or vice versa and you will have remembered how to make audible sounds with your mouth. The transition were rather smooth and its an good way to beat the stage fright. Just keep talking.

Next: The importance of regular posts for the success of your blog.