Hacker News Reader

Comment by CJefferson | Hacker News Reader

As someone who sees a lot of students start to get into presenting, there is one important thing (in my opinion) to remember.

You should certainly aim to present beautiful presentations, with informative and colourful slides, with minimal bullet points and no text dumps. However, make sure you design a presentation you can give. Everything you take off your slides is more information you have to give your audience.

When starting out, there is nothing wrong with using slides as a crutch. Some of the worst talks I have ever seen consisted of minimalist slides and a speaker who was just not (yet) capable of presenting completely solo. At least with info-dump slides, I can still follow the presentation by reading the slides!

View on HN

I kind of disagree. I think that, once you start using a crutch, you're almost certainly never going to stop, especially in a perceived-risk-high situation like public speaking. "Info-dump slides worked last time. I'll go with what works again, rather than adding risk by trying to be more minimal," repeat ad infinitum.

It's better to recognize that you just didn't prepare enough (didn't practice sufficiently; didn't know your subject well enough; didn't anticipate questions and concerns; etc.) and prepare better next time.

It might be a little different in a teacher-student environment where direct guidance is possible and disasters can be coddled and mitigated and explained away as "this is a learning environment; screwing up is okay". Just... don't grade it.

Well, it depends how much you care that your talk was a disaster.

For people who are not practised at speaking, there is almost no amount of preparation which will get you to the point of needing no crutch. Not knowing your subject well enough is not excusable, but many people who can happily explain a topic in a one-on-one situation have great difficulties in front of crowd.

Of course, there is only one way to get better a public speaking, which is to do as much of it as you can.

I don't understand your 'teacher-student environment' comment. Are you suggesting 'coddling' encourages, or discourages, giving talks with less crutches?

In a way though, this could serve as a kind of test for the student beforehand to see which parts they're comfortable with. I recently gave a presentation like this as part of my course and tried to follow the style described in the article. I started out with quite a nice visually appealing set of minimalistic slides, but ended up with a hybrid of that and what you usually see in lectures that also need to serve as handouts for later. So yes, I agree that people giving presentations as part of school projects should be cautious about trying to do more than they are ready for, but I also think it's somewhat a shame that we aren't given enough opportunities to practice that other side of presenting as well.

I have been trying to increase the amount of practice students get. Irritatingly, many students get very annoyed when asked to give talks for which they will not be graded, which makes it hard to give students the chance to practice in a risk-free (by which I mean mark-free) environment.

I'd say it's much better to use things like Presenter Mode as a crutch, where you see the private notes, current and next slides and a clock on your own screen. That way you can focus on delivery, not on memorization, but your audience doesn't have to be distracted by it.

However, ideally, your presentation should flow well enough that you can remember the whole thing as you go through it. If it's too complicated for you, who knows it intimately, your audience definitely will get lost.

I have never liked presenter modes. It's too much information, and I have to interrupt my thinking (which implies I will interrupt my speaking) to process the information. I much prefer to just see what the audience sees.

It also isn't much help because I tend not to spend much time near my laptop. I walk around a lot when I speak, and instead of using a laser pointer, I prefer to gesture directly at the screen - in much the same way you would gesture at whiteboard diagrams when explaining something to a colleague.

Of course, people should do what works for them. I don't use notes, and I'm fortunate enough that in the places I give talks, someone else is keeping time for me, and will give me signals when it's running out. But public speaking is one of those things that you do what's comfortable for you, because the more comfortable you are, the better the talk will be.

I don't use speaker notes as a script to read. I use it to list additional bullet points.

  - history
  - story re: jason @ costco
  - importance of $foo

would be cues to me that I need to hit on the history of this slide, tell an anecdote, and really bring home the importance of $foo. No need to put exact words. Just where I should be going on this presentation if I get flummoxed.

Yes, I understood "notes" to be those kinds of notes. I think notes are a great thing to use if they help you, but I find I don't need them. When I present, it's technical material that I know backwards-and-forwards, so I've never felt the need for notes. In particular, my slides tend to be mostly diagrams and performance graphs. I have found that when looking at and explaining figures, I can't help but remember all of the important things related to it.

Presenter mode also has a clock though, which I think is important in the beginning. A common mistake is to simply cram too much into your slides. Like trying to introduce a topic, but immediately trying to catch all the nuances too. It will fly over your audience's heads and they won't care.

People underestimate how long it takes to explain things because they never actually practice and time their presentation. When I make slides, I prefer to time each section right after I'm done with it, so I can make sure I keep a consistent pace throughout. It also means you never make slides you're not going to use.

And even while speaking, if you notice you're coming up short, you can strategically skip things rather than being caught by surprise and having to stop mid-slide.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com