Talk Prep:
Follow a Simple Outline

     You can only transmit a few key points to the audience. Concentrate on the central themes and ideas of your work. Establish and clarify concepts, definitions, trends and comparisons. Try to use familiar examples or analogies. Compare with existing approaches or technologies that are well-known to your audience. Resist using jargon, or acronyms since your jargon may not be as widely spoken as you think. If you do use a word that may not be familiar to the audience, define it.

     Of course, the outline you will use for your presentation will depend on the nature of your work. However, most top-quality presentations follow a variation of the outline below:

• Introduce the problem. What led to your work? What were your goals?
  
• Summarize previous, related work. Point out its limitations for your problem.
  
• Describe your solution or approach, focusing on the key ideas, and present the conclusions to be drawn from your work.
  
• Present any experimental evidence you have to support your conclusions.
  
• Identify incorrect approaches taken so as to prevent others from wasting effort.
  
• Why is your solution a good one? What are its disadvantages or limitations?
  
• Suggest other applications of your work. Do you recommend further development along the lines of your work? Why? Or why not?
  
• Summarize the presentation with a simple statement of the problem, your key ideas, your conclusions, and, if appropriate, your directions for future work. Try to tell your story in a straight line. Each point should lead to the next, and remember that understanding is enhanced with simple organization. If your audience has not read your paper, you want them to leave the room with a strong desire to do so.
  
• Plan a series of slides that progressively disclose your subject and your contribution. Build from cause to effect, simple to more complex, question to answer. Take care not to bury your punch line in too much detail.