[MUSIC] Hello everyone. In this video, we will be covering just a few basics on presentation skills, and also just a bit of advice for those slides that you may be preparing for your next presentation. If I'm going to make one very important point during my presentation, it's to encourage you to keep your presentations to 3 important points. If we compare a lot of courses online or a lot of presentation courses, they will probably say much the same thing. And most of them say keep your presentations to three main points. And I gotta tell ya, it's really good advice. So let's keep that advice, shall we? My second piece of advice is don't forget about the theme of the event for which you were invited to speak at. I've seen a lot of presentations in my experience and it's pretty obvious which speakers have respected the theme of the event and completely ignored it. So it's in your best interest actually to try your best to pitch your presentation as best you can to the theme of the event you've been invited to. Another important basic idea is that you need to put your findings or your conclusion at the beginning. This may surprise some of you, but our attention span is actually at its highest at the beginning of your presentation and at the end. I'm sorry to say that, but it's the truth. So if you really truly want us to remember those results, then you've gotta put them at the beginning and you've gotta put them at the end. Another key point that I see day in and day out is I see so many speakers who speak too quickly. Now there's a lot of reasons for that. Either they're nervous or they've got way too much content and they didn't time themselves or prepare in advance. Or they really do truly have a very short period of time to speak and they really gotta get through it. For example, medical conferences. Sometimes those speeches last just 15 minutes. Can you imagine? So, the temptation is to speak incredibly fast, and I'm here to tell you: slow down. Get to the point as quickly as possible. "Quickly"... get to the point as clearly as you can and show us your results at the beginning and at the end and try to be as concise as possible. Trust me, you can fit a lot of information into just 15 minutes, but it takes practice. And my last piece of basic advice on presentations is try to limit the hesitations. What I mean by that is the "ums" and the "uhs" and the "ers" that come out of your mouth. I know this is really difficult and it takes an enormous amount of practice. But my advice is to record yourself in advance, either by audio or by video, and count how many times you say: "um, uh, er". And you'll find that if you are a speaker who says "um, uh, er" a lot, then you're going to need to practice as much as possible to eliminate those hesitations. I'll tell you why. Because those hesitations waste an enormous amount of time. And that is time that you could use inserting other content into your speech. But again, it takes practice. Okay, let's talk about slides, shall we? Now, every online course and every presentations course is going to give you loads of information on what you should do and what you should not do about your slides. I'm going to try to keep things quick and simple. Now, let's talk about the amount of information on your slide. That seems to be the number one, key point that so many training programs point out and they always have the same advice, which is: limit the information on your slides. Now, I'm here to tell you that I like to be a little bit flexible. I say it really depends on the situation and the context in which you're speaking. Let's give an example. If you're going to be speaking to an online audience in front of your peers or in a face-to-face conference with your fellow researchers. Yeah, okay, and it's fine. It's probably expected to load tons and tons of information onto the slide. Another reason it doesn't bother me is because I like the convenience of taking a photograph. Or taking a screenshot of that particular researcher. That way I have all the key information that I need on that researcher's results. So it's really debatable, in my opinion. But, if you're addressing the general public, that's when the rules really change. And the general public are quite intolerant to slides that are full of information. Keep things very very simple and as clearly as possible. And we're going to see some great examples later on in this week. Another aspect of scientific presentations that I appreciate are the presentations that show me, the audience member, where the presenter is in their speech. Their slides for instance have numbers on them. It seems quite simple, but it actually really helps because at least we now know where you are in your presentation and how close are you to your conclusion, which is where the most important information is. If you use "beamer," which is the LaTeX presentation extension, then most of the templates will have this by default. And here's my bottom line tip for slides. How clearly can you present and back up your research without slides? If you're attending a conference, whether it be face-to-face or online, it's not a question of "if", but a question of "when" the technology is not going to work. And your slides will not be available. What do you do then? So, you have got to be prepared well in advance for that time when it comes. Back up your slides on a USB, PDF, cloud link, whatever. But if you've got no slides whatsoever, please, just keep going. [MUSIC]
