While I’d love for every conference presentation I give to be the highlight of the conference, I should be honest with myself: most attendees won’t remember any details from my talk. They won’t recall how the animation on Slide 6 subtly (but effectively) showed the precision of my experimental method. Nor will they remember how the conclusion slide tied together key images that summarized the three main points of my presentation. This isn’t their fault—and it’s not my fault either.

During the back-to-back-to-back technical sessions at most conferences, it’s impossible to recall details of every presentation, poster, and conversation. I may remember a particularly good or bad presentation, but most are just a blur of PowerPoint slides. In my experience, conference presentation quality and memorability follow a normal (or Gaussian) distribution:

Most presentations are, well, average.

A perfectly average (but very unremarkable) presentation sits at the top of the distribution. Details from about 95% of presentations are probably forgotten shortly after the conference but there are a few outstandingly good presentations (“Hall of Fame”) and outstandingly bad presentations (“Hall of Shame”) that are remembered and discussed long after the conference. The question becomes: where will your conference presentation be on this distribution?

I always intend to start preparing my conference presentations at least a month ahead of time, but often life gets in the way—even for us, Communication Fellows. More realistically, I’m opening PowerPoint about 10 days before my talk and starting to worry. Instead of spending limited preparation time on creating a “Hall of Fame” presentation, I try to focus my time and effort on what I actually want the audience to take away from my talk and what I want to take away from the conference. I’ve found this strategy tends to be the most decent return on investment.

My presentation: an exercise in “good enough”

Earlier this year I found myself preparing a presentation about a week before the conference started. My research and post-graduation career plans had both shifted since I submitted my conference abstract six months earlier. With a week left and no clear goals for my presentation or my attendance at the conference, what was I actually trying to accomplish? There are a bunch of different motivations to present at a conference and the importance of each can vary dramatically person to person, conference to conference. For this particular presentation, my motivations looked like this:

And by the way, there’s no shame in wanting to travel to a conference for vacation from time to time. Why else would they plan a technical conference at a beautiful resort?

Although I was technically presenting a new regulatory method that I had developed, my real motivation was to increase my visibility as a researcher. So I spent my limited time on the portions of my presentation that would highlight my experience and knowledge! The audience may not remember (or care about) the specific method that I was discussing, but I was hoping that they would remember me as researcher—a competent researcher. This meant also avoiding giving a “Hall of Shame” presentation.

What makes a “Hall of Shame” presentation? Well, think about the worst presentation you ever saw. What happened? Some of the worst talks that I’ve seen (and remembered long afterward) could check more than one box on this list:

I made sure to avoid all these “worst practices.” My presentation had a clear point that a majority of the audience would understand. It looked average but professional, and was short enough that I could deliver it comfortably in my 20-minute time slot. The final slides didn’t have fancy graphics or detailed data tables, but I managed to complete the presentation in two days. With the rest of my prep time, I practiced my talk and read up on new papers related to my topic so I’d be prepared for the Q&A after that talk. I was ready to present!

The aftermath: “good enough” was actually good enough

Between my practiced delivery and the better-than-expected audience engagement afterward, I thought that my presentation was ultimately a pretty good (but pretty forgettable) talk:

Once again, focusing on my objectives helped me make smart use of my limited preparation time. Still, there may be a time when I will want to aim for a “Hall of Fame” presentation (my defense? my next job interview?), and I hope I’ll be able to deliver something better than “good enough.”

Patrick White is a PhD graduate student working with Profs. Koroush Shirvan and Zach Hartwig. He is also a Communication Fellow.

Published November 30, 2020


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