Mechanics of Presentation
- Use a good presentation-building tool, like MS PowerPoint. Avoid Latex, except for slides with formulas. Good looks are important. If you need formulas, try TeXPoint, George Necula's Latex for Powerpoint.
- Humor is very useful; prepare a couple of puns and jokes beforehand (but not epic jokes, which require complicated setup). However, if you're not good with jokes, better avoid them altogether. Improvising humor is very dangerous.
- The more you rehearse the talk, the better it will be. A rehearsal is most useful when carried out loud. 5 rehearsals is a minimum for an important talk.
- The more people criticize your talk (during practice), the better it will be; pay attention to criticism, not necessarily to all suggestions, but try to see what and why people misunderstood your ideas.
- When using printed slides, avoid overlay slides; they are awkward to use.
- Not everything has to be written down; speech can and should complement the information on the slides.
- Be enthusiastic.
- Act your talk: explain, ask rhetorical questions, act surprised, etc.
- Give people time to think about the important facts by slowing down, or even stopping for a moment.
- Do not go overtime under any circumstance.
- Listen to the questions very carefully; many speakers answer different questions than the ones asked.
