Preparing Effective Presentations

These tips apply regardless of whether the time for the presentations is short (less

than 30 minutes) or long. Complaints about poor presentations have been received

for decades and continue to be received. Effective presentations make learning and

technical advances more likely. They also enhance the perception of the presenter

in the eyes of the professional community. Boring, ineffective presentations are not

paid much attention.

Organize content

• Make sure the audience walks away understanding the five things any

listener to a presentation really cares about:

presentations.

• Allow time to describe the problem clearly enough for the audience to

appreciate the value of your contribution. This usually will take more than 30

seconds.

• Leave enough time to present your own contribution clearly. This will rarely

require all of the allotted time.

• Put your material in a context that the audience can relate to. It's a good

idea to aim your presentation to an audience of colleagues who are not

familiar with your research area. Your objective is to communicate an

appreciation of the importance of your work, not just to lay out the results.

color shifts can make the important material hard to read. Less is more.

• Use at least a 24-point font so everyone in the room can read your material.

Unreadable material is worse than useless—it inspires a negative attitude

among the audience to your work and, ultimately, to you. NEVER use a

photocopy of a standard printed page as a display— it is difficult to overstate

how annoying this is to an audience.

• Try to limit the material to eight lines per slide, and keep the number of

words to a minimum. Summarize the main points—don't include every detail

of what you plan to say. Keep it simple.

• Limit the tables to four rows or columns for readability. Sacrifice content for

will be easier to read when the material is displayed using slides or LCD

(data) projectors.

• Use equations sparingly, if at all—audience members not working in the

research area can find them difficult to follow as part of a rapidly delivered

presentation. Avoid derivations and concentrate on presenting what your

results mean. The audience will concede the proof and those who really are

interested can follow up with you, which they're more likely to do if they

understand your presentation.

• Don't fill up the transparency or slide— the peripheral material may not make

it onto the display screen—especially the material on the bottom of a

happens!

Don't deliver a 30-minute talk in 15 minutes. Nothing irritates an audience more

than a rushed presentation. Your objective is to engage the audience and have

Think in terms of what it would take if you were giving (or, better, listening to) the

last paper in the last contributed paper session of the last day. This means:

• Present only as much material as can reasonably fit into the time period

allotted. Generally, that means one slide or overhead per minute, or less.

• Talk at a pace that everybody in the audience can understand. Speak slowly,

clearly, and loudly, especially if your English is heavily accented.

• PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Ask a colleague to judge your presentation,

delivery, clarity of language, and use of time.

• Balance the amount of material you present with a reasonable pace of

presentation. If you feel rushed when you practice, then you have too much

material. Budget your time to take a minute or two less than your maximum

Section 508 of the amended Rehabilitation Act was enacted to eliminate barriers

comparable with the availability enjoyed by people without disabilities.

• Use recommended fonts such as: Times New Roman, Verdana, Arial,

Tahoma, and Helvetica. Do not use italic.

• Don't use text boxes, always use the slide layout.

• Avoid using flickering/flashing text and/or animated text.

• Be sure that all text appears in the outline view text in a text box will not

appear in the outline view.

• Create title using a title holder, not text box.

• Use applications slides to create for graphics and images, and apply alternate

text (alt text).

first row. Row headers should be in the first column. Tabulated data should

not be displayed using tabs and spacing.

• Apply descriptive text immediately after complex images.

• All track changes must be accepted or rejected and turned off.

• Be sure to use correct hyperlinks (URLs) and display the fully qualified URL

(i.e. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs and not www.cdc.gov/nchs).

• Use Section 508 resources

o Accessible PowerPoint Conference Template

o HHS.gov - Testing Documents for Section 508 Compliance

• Prepare a handout. If you use a computer to prepare your visual displays,

you can get a handout with several slides or pages on a single physical page

for essentially no extra effort using available software.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE the presentation, with attention to content,