Communication and Presentation Skills

Political Philosophy and Knowledge Nature

  • Political philosophy and the nature of knowledge are deeply philosophical questions.
  • Studying political philosophy and the nature of knowledge are extremely helpful, informing each other.

Introduction to Public Speaking

  • Glossophobia: The fear of speaking in front of an audience.
    • Glosso means tongue, related to the word glossary.
    • Phobia means fear.
    • Fear of public speaking is ranked higher than the fear of death in some research.
  • Eduardo Vellozzo: Aims to dispel fears and train individuals to become better public speakers.
  • Effective communication and clear presentation of ideas are crucial for career success.

The Importance of Presentations

  • Every talk is essentially a job interview.
  • A confident, articulate, and persuasive speaker is highly desirable.
  • Giving a good talk can lead to job offers.

Qualities of a Good Presentation

  • Clarity: Clear and easily understandable.
  • Fluency: Smooth and coherent delivery.
  • Audience Interaction: Engaging with the audience.
  • Confidence: Speaker's self-assuredness.
  • Enthusiasm: Passion and excitement from the speaker.

Preparation for a Good Presentation

  • Chart the Landscape: Understand the context of the presentation.
    • Format: Oral presentation, poster, short pitch, showcase.
    • Time: Stay within the allotted time.
    • Venue: Consider the space, layout, and potential barriers to interaction.
    • Time of Day: Be mindful of the audience's energy levels at that time.
    • Audience: Know who you are speaking to (e.g., first-year computer science students).
    • Expectations: Understand what the audience wants to learn.
    • Main Point: Identify the key idea to communicate.

Honing the Key Idea

  • Write the idea down.
  • Practice out loud.
  • Distill the message into a 30-second to 1-minute elevator pitch.
  • Focus on expanding that core idea rather than cramming too much information.

Starting the Presentation Preparation

  • Avoid translating a written report directly into slides.
    • A presentation is a different medium than a written report.
    • Embrace what the medium is good at and avoid what it's not.
    • Some things are better presented on paper (e.g., tables with many columns/rows, complex graphs).
  • Having a practice audience is crucial to test if your message is being understood.

Avoiding a Boring Opening

  • Avoid starting with generic outlines (e.g., introduction, related work, methods, results, conclusion).
    • This wastes valuable time when the audience is most attentive.
    • Everyone knows that every talk will have that structure.

Six Characteristics of Sticky Messages (Chip and Dan Heath)

  • Simplicity: Focus on one point at a time.
  • Unexpectedness: Provoke a reaction and create pushback from the audience.
  • Concreteness: Use examples.
  • Credibility: Assert your expertise.
  • Emotions: Elicit an emotional reaction from the audience.
  • Story: Structure the presentation as a narrative.

Power of Emotions vs. Data

  • A powerful emotional image can convey a message more effectively than raw data.
  • Example: Comparing a map showing hunger statistics in Africa to a compelling image of someone affected by hunger.

Turning Messages into Stories

  • Example: Transforming information about privacy policies into a story about signing documents without reading them.
  • Stories are powerful because our brains are finely tuned to respond to them.

The Hero's Journey and ABT Structure

  • The hero's journey is a standard structure for many stories.

  • ABT (And, But, Therefore): Basic narrative structure.

    • Distinct from structures that don't work as well, like:
      • AAA (And , And, And): a sequence of facts that makes the audience fall asleep.
      • DHY (Despite, However, Yet): A meandering story that never progresses.

  • ABT Structure: Fractal (applies to the big picture, chapters, paragraphs, and sentences).

    • And: The ordinary world as it is.
    • But: Some contradiction or tension arises, that needs to be addressed.
    • Therefore: There is a consequence.

Applying ABT to Abstracts

  • Analyzing abstracts to determine if they follow an ABT structure or an AAA or DHY structure.
  • If someone asks what's your project about, you are able to describe it in an interesting way with above structure.

Planning the Talk - Opening

  • If someone introduces you and gives information about yourself, dont repeat it.
  • Audience attention tends to be high at the beginning, drops off, and peaks slightly at the end.
  • The goal is to keep engagement high by introducing interesting tidbits throughout.
  • Deliver key messages when the audience's attention is at its highest.

The Hook

  • A hook is an interesting fact or statement that captures the audience's attention.
  • Examples:
    • "I'm going to increase your lifespan by 7.5 minutes."
    • "Let's watch a movement happen from start to finish in under three minutes."
    • "I have an evil way of predicting human behavior, picking pockets".
    • "The person to your right is a liar".
    • Imagine a plane falling from the skies.
  • Strategies:
    • Make the audience think.
    • Ask a question.
    • Show a benefit to the audience.
    • Start with a statement.
    • Use an analogy.

Linking the Hook to the Topic

  • Provide a link back to the main topic of the presentation.
  • Example: Starting with the invention of the mouse and linking it to foot-controlled computer interfaces.

Introducing Yourself and Establishing Credibility

  • The goal is to establish credibility as a speaker.
  • Convey expertise through research, lived experience, and confident delivery.
  • Speak loudly, come close to the audience, and make eye contact.

Bringing Benefit to the Audience

  • Focus on what the audience wants to learn and how they can benefit.
  • Highlight key takeaway points and actionable recommendations.
  • Outline of Key Opening Steps:
    • Open with Hook
    • Link
    • Introduction
    • Benefit to the audience.

Designing Slides

  • Academics often produce slides that contain too much text and overwhelming information.
  • Poor Slide Design Pitfalls:
    • Too Much Text, Clutter, Boring Visual Design, hard to read anything
  • Corporate templates for slides are designed to sell the company and not the person, so they are not usually a good idea.
  • Start with a blank slide and build it up to make sense for you.

Using Images in Slides

  • Be careful with the imagery that you use.
  • Do not use posed images.
  • Use candid looking photos.
  • Avoid obvious cliches, be a bit unorthodox.
  • Unsplash is a great resource for royalty-free images.
  • Use good quality images and use professional photographs when possible.
  • Use full screen images whenever possible.
  • Put text following people's line of sight in photograph.

Typography (Fonts)

  • Pick two fonts: One for the headings and one for the subheadings.
  • Try to pick fonts that are contrasting.
  • Search for font pairings in Google images.
  • If your talk is about technology, use sans serif fonts to evoke modernity.

Animations

  • Animations can help avoid complexity, but they need to be used carefully.
  • Speed it up, set the animation for 1 sec MAX.
  • Use an appropriate metaphor.
  • Redesign it for better clarity.
  • Make animation consistent.
  • Use different slides and interpolating between them, that makes doing complex animations easier.
  • Morph effect is really cool, because you can use morph to do do key frame animation.

Videos

  • Everyone likes a video because its an amazing resource that will keep people's attention high at all times.
  • Do not post a youtube ink - its a terrible strategy.
  • Always download and embed the actual file into your into your slide.
  • Trick: Set the video to play in the click sequence.
  • Trim the video.

Graphs

  • It's hard to pass all the information if there is too much.
  • Present one simple fact and step by step.

Prepare Your Body (Warming Up)

  • This is a physical performance. Every time after I leave this room, I am knackered.
  • Our bodies are not made for this.
  • Actors warm up alot before giving a performance, you can search for guided videos on youtube.
  • Stretching. Hold your hands in front of your body, behind your body, Stretch your hips.
  • Breathing. Fill up your lungs, belly forward, and hold it there. Long releases.
  • Resonance. Massaging Jaw.
  • Opening Up Your Voices. Throw your arm over your head and stretch to your side.
  • Articulation. Meaning how we pronounce the words, dont tighten your neck - you might look silly.
  • Tongue twisters: do daily deeds diligently, red lorry, yellow lorry,

Dealing with Stage Fright

  • Acknowledge that it's okay to be nervous, everyone is.
  • Do some field reconnaissance, stand on the on the stage.
  • Know the audience, chat to them.
  • Relax, inhale, hold, exhale.
  • Find your allies in the audience, the ones looking at you and paying attention and smiling and nodding.
  • Don't apologize, most likely, your audience can't tell.

Delivering the Message

  • Michael Bay presentation went terribly wrong because he got flustered, couldn't deliver his lines etc.
  • Wasn't familiar with that he was talking about and wasn't genuine.
  • The problem with monotone is there is just no pacing and no breathing.
  • Crutch words are words that you say when you don't have anything to say (ums, buts etc).
  • Acknowledge that you have that and try to to stay quiet.
  • Emphasis the main words on each phrase.
  • You should write a script, especially if your talk is important, but please don't read it.
  • They're scented, Try to avoid bobbing up and down.
  • A lapel mix is best so people can always hear you.
  • Check that you can move your arms comfortably/You wanna dress one notch above the audience.
  • Feet shoulder width apart, Find your allies, Move with purpose, Face the audience.
  • Try to look to each member in the crowd.
  • The pointing is rude, don't cross the hands on your crotch, point at what you need to.
  • The point of the gestures are to reinforce what you're saying, not to distract from the message.

Closing a Talk

  • Terrible way to close a talk, thank you for listening.
  • Highlight your takeaways, the final slide is the slide that will be up the longest. List of bullet points etc
  • Unorthodox, say guys im going to pause to answer any questions.
  • I want to open for some questions, and then I'm gonna discuss some takeaways from today.
  • What is a takeaway, Good presentation is about preparing.
  • Structure your narrative as a story, open with hook.
  • Your talk isn't about you, its about them, Use your deslgn skllls to craft
  • Visual concse slides
  • They ARE THERE TO SUPPORT YOUR STORY,NOT TOTEt L THE STORY FOR YOU.
  • Always practice.