DOI: 10.1002/anie.201209795
Effective Presentations—A Must
Craig J. Hawker*
Effective presentations are critical for
success in whatever career path one
takes. Nevertheless, very little attention
is devoted to teaching our students how
to give a good presentation. How many
times are we surprised at how poor
presentations are, even from well-
known scientists? We should not be
surprised, since we provide little, if any,
guidance for students, and poor com-
munication techniques are simply
propagated through the system. What
follows is not an exhaustive list of dos
and donts, rather it is designed to bring
attention to this issue, and, in a similar
way to the influential text by George M.
Whitesides on “Writing a Paper” (Adv.
Mater. 2004, 16, 1375), initiate a discus-
sion on the topic. If chemists can be-
come better at communicating their
ideas to fellow scientists who specialize
in different areas, to funders, govern-
ment policy makers, industrial partners,
and the general public, the future of the
chemical enterprise will be healthier and
our students will be more successful in
their professional lives.
While a publication can be read again
and again, a presentation is over imme-
diately. Therefore, the rules for writing
a publication differ from those for
preparing a presentation. The best pre-
sentation is—like the best measure-
ment—the one that has the highest
signal-to-noise ratio. In the case of
presentations, the signal is the delivery
of a clear message. Noise, which can
include too much information, poor
slides, filler words such as “um” and
“ah”, must be minimized.
Two Indispensable Considerations
Before you start preparing a presenta-
tion you should answer the following
questions:
1. What is my message? To answer this
question it must become clear to you
why the audience should care about
your work; how it affects them either
professionally or personally; and
what the big picture is.
2. Which story do I use to convey my
message? It is essential to focus the
attention of your audience. To ach-
ieve this, you first have to think
about who your audience is—are
they in the same field as you, is it
a diverse group of scientists, or
maybe even a general audience?
The Slides
Many of us start with the creation of
the slides to be used in the presentation.
As with a manuscript, you should start
with an outline, though this is where the
similarities with writing a manuscript
end. Specific rules and good habits
include:
1. Do not reproduce images directly
from manuscripts, as this conveys the
message to the audience that little
thought has gone into the presenta-
tion. You can stare at a figure in
a manuscript for an hour as a reader,
in a presentation you typically have
less than a minute. As a result, the
image has to be simple.
2. One message–one slide to maximize
signal to noise. That means: go
critically over every part of every
image on a slide and ask whether this
is absolutely necessary. If the answer
is “maybe”, then delete it. I am
always shocked when a presenter
puts up a slide that is extremely busy,
then tells you to ignore most of the
slide. If it is not relevant, then do not
show it.
3. Make your slides visually appealing.
The audience does not have much
time to take in the information on
the slides, and so they cannot be
distracted by poor font selection, bad
color choices, and so on.
4. Limit text. The text should only
support or convey the one message
per slide rule. To help ourselves
during presentations, we often fall
into the bad habit of putting too
much text on slides and then simply
reading the text to the audience. This
only ends up being noise. This rule
also applies to the slide title itself: it
should not describe the slide. Imag-
ine a slide detailing how a compound
was shown to be a single stereoiso-
mer by NMR spectroscopy. Having
“NMR of compound X” as a slide
title is useless. This conveys no
valuable information. Instead use
the title to reinforce the message of
the slide, for example, “Single Ste-
reoisomer is Observed”.
[*] Prof. Dr. C. J. Hawker
Depts. of Chemistry & Biochemistry, and
Materials
and Materials Research Laboratory
University of California Santa Barbara
MRL, MC 5121, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
E-mail: [email protected]
Homepage: http://hawkergroup.mrl.ucsb.
edu/
Craig J. Hawker
Professor of Chemistry
University of California,
Santa Barbara
.
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Practicing
Presentations rely on both visual cues
(slides) as well as oral reinforcement
(speaking). Many of us are comfortable
with creating slides, but few researchers
enjoy speaking to an audience. There-
fore: practice the full presentation, ei-
ther in front of co-workers or colleagues.
No amount of just looking at your slides
will ever make up for actually standing
up and verbalizing what you want to say.
Time yourself, work on improving the
flow of the presentation, and make sure
the key messages of the talk are clear.
How often do presentations either run
over time, with the presenter skipping
the last 5–10 slides or racing through
them at such a rate that no one pays
attention. This leaves the audience with
a very poor impression of the whole
presentation. Finishing early is actually
a good thing. To more effectively dem-
onstrate the importance of practice,
consider the following. A normal pre-
sentation may cover many years of work
in the laboratory. Certainly this is worth
a few hours of practice.
The Talk
To make the actual presentation a suc-
cess the following rules should be taken
into account:
1. Engage with the audience. This may
seem simple, but again speakers
typically do not do this and, as
a result, they lose their audience.
As just one example of a common
mistake, do not look at the screen,
unless you need to illustrate some-
thing using the laser pointer. Instead
focus on the audience and make eye
contact with as many people as
possible. In addition, use visual cues
from the audience to quicken, or
slow, your presentation. Try to inter-
act with people in the audience and
welcome comments during the pre-
sentation. Audiences are more en-
gaged when a presentation is a two-
way discussion rather than a strict
monologue.
2. Project a sense of confidence and
professionalism. It may seem minor,
but projecting confidence to your
audience through well-chosen words,
steady delivery, and a professional
appearance counts for a lot and is
very easy to accomplish. As the
saying goes, “first appearances
count”, and this is equally true for
presentations. But do not forget to be
authentic.
3. Make effective use of voice and
pointers. For many researchers the
effective use of their voice is a chal-
lenge. While many people know to
avoid filler words such as “um” and
“ah”, it is less well known that silence
can be one of the most effective tools
during a presentation. It helps frame
points and brings the audience into
your story. Next time you feel like
saying “um” or “ah”, use silence
instead and see how effective this is.
Equally important is to use the
cadence and volume of your voice
to maximize the impact of your main
points. Finally, overuse and erratic
movements of a laser pointer con-
tributes significantly to “noise”—
laser pointers are for emphasis, noth-
ing more.
So what?
Is it important for the chemistry com-
munity to be better communicators?
Absolutely! We all go to conferences
where we present technical data with
one of the purposes being to receive
advice and suggestions concerning re-
search directions. Do we ever ask for
feedback on how the data were present-
ed or if the presentation was effective?
No! This is a major issue as all research-
ers, from students to faculty, must be-
come more proactive in improving their
communication skills by seeking out
critical feedback and devoting signifi-
cant time to preparation. Our passion
and devotion to chemical research must
be matched by our ability to communi-
cate the results.
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3Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52, 2 –4 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.angewandte.org
These are not the final page numbers!
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Editorial
C. J. Hawker*
&&&& — &&&&
Effective Presentations—A Must
“… While a publication can be read again
and again, a presentation is over immedi-
ately. Therefore, the rules for writing a pub-
lication differ from those for preparing
a presentation. The best presentation is—
like the best measurement—the one that
has the highest signal-to-noise ratio …”Read
more in the Editorial by Craig J. Hawker.
.
Angewandte
Editorial
.
4 www.angewandte.org 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2013, 52,2–4
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These are not the final page numbers!
