Giving a talk — the Via Negativa approach
I have attended hundreds, if not thousands, of non-scientific and scientific talks and lectures over the years. And to be frank: A minority was excellent, some were good, most were bad, some were horrible. Naval Ravikant said: “learn to sell, learn to build, if you can do both, you will be unstoppable.” As most of my colleagues and students are great builders, I thought to spend some time on the former. Being a strong communicator is never a bad thing. There are enough geniuses stuck because they can not sell or communicate their idea.
I recognize that preparation time and stake are significant factors when giving a talk. Preparation time is self-explanatory. By stake, I mean how much you stand to win or lose: your skin in the game. Sometimes there is a lot at stake, such as pitching your idea for funding or selling your product. Other times, a presentation is basically just a duty or routine. Still, even then, it pays to follow some basic guidelines.
Via negativa — Improvement through subtraction
I like the “Via Negativa” approach as described in Antifragile by Nassim Taleb. The via negativa, in my simple understanding, is to get rid of all the bad stuff to, hopefully, end up with something decent. Basically, if you see something that does not work or does not belong: Remove it.
For example, instead of focusing on perfection, concentrate on removing and correcting mistakes and errors. This approach will eventually leave you with something decent. With this frame of mind, let us talk about the talks, so to speak. Mind you, my experience is mostly from academia, but I think these principles are transferrable to most domains.
Do not be afraid of your audience
It is ok to be nervous. In fact, I will argue that if you are not nervous, it does not mean anything to you: You have no skin in the game — nothing to lose or win. But if you are stuck in a boring routine: Break it, take risks, try something new. Things are a lot more meaningful when we dedicate ourselves to the task, and giving a talk is no different.
We need to agree on something right away: Your audience is not your enemy. They are there to listen to you, you have their eyes and ears in the coming minutes, and it is up to you to make the most of it and win them over. It does not matter if 5 or 1000 people are listening. You owe it to them and yourself to give it your best.
Do not be afraid of questions
Questions are immediate feedback to you that your listeners were engaged. Yeah, you can get hard questions, long questions. or speeches where someone is really just showing off rather than asking anything. Some people are really sharp and can pick you apart as well. Yeah, sometimes it is embarrassing, but you grow to be better; you learn to deal with the hard stuff. IMO there is nothing worse than putting it into a presentation to a mute and uninterested audience.
Do not give a talk without knowing your audience
I do not mean knowing them intimately, but it is essential to understand your audiences as they vary through organizations, countries, and cultures. Are you giving a talk to the IT crowd or to the top management? Are you in the geographical east or west? Will you address a grave topic, or do you have some slack? What is the company culture like? For example, if you are like me and enjoy making (bad) jokes, you need to know what is acceptable within that culture. You also need to know what they find funny, so you don’t brick too severely in your attempt. But bricking out is also part of the game. When in doubt, blame the audience for not having a sense of humour. I am joking, do not do that.
Do not assume that they understand what you are talking about.
Even experts in your field are not necessarily experts in YOUR field. Too often have I observed speakers making way too big assumptions about the background knowledge of their listeners. The audience has not been a part of your thought process leading up to this specific moment in time and often can not relate. A major error is not explaining the problem well enough and (your understanding of) key premises. As a rule of thumb, I use about 30% of a presentation explaining the problem and background of the problem to get the audience on board.
Do not assume that they will think your presentation topic is interesting.
Most of the time, you will be facing a diverse audience with slightly overlapping or interests outside your field of expertise. Your topic might have been your whole world for the last years, and it is therefore obvious to you why this is important. However, depending on how narrow your topic is, you need to tell them why it is important AND how it relates to the real world. Yeah, I know some theoretical fields will be on the fringe, but most (useful) sciences and innovations have real-world applications. Your problem is interesting, but you need to make an effort for other people to understand.
Do not give a presentation without (real-world) examples
Examples and analogies allow us to understand complicated ideas across similar domains. For instance, according to Wikipedia: iptables is a user-space utility program that allows a system administrator to configure the IP packet filter rules in Linux. Or we can just call it a firewall, you know because walls help to keep the bad stuff away. When explaining difficult things, I find that real-world analogies and examples work the best. Choose familiar examples that both you and the audience know well.
Do not get too far out of line
If there are clear expectations or formats to follow, be respectful and follow them. The level of creativity you are allowed is determined by the setting in which you are delivering your speech.
Do not spend more time than you are allotted
One of the most annoying things are speakers who spend more time than they have. This issue is commonplace at academic conferences where the speaker(s) ahead of you can eat into your presentation time. The more strict the setting, the more critical it is to maintain the schedule. It is disrespectful to both the organizers, audience and your fellow speakers.
Do not get on stage without having a clear message and chronology
Think about what you want the crowd to understand. If you are using a slide deck, think about each slide and the message you want to convey with it. What is the message to the audience? And how does it connect with the previous and upcoming slides? Stacking the presentation in the right order is vital for allowing the audience to keep track and delivering the message.
And finally… Creating a wall of text on each slide and reading it out loud is bad practice.
Sometimes, when I am tired of listening to myself presenting and just want to finish, I have just read my bullet points out loud. I am not proud of it, but it has happened more than once. However, for some speakers, the modus operandi just fills their slides with text from top to bottom and reads the content aloud. In which case, it would probably be quicker to just send the slides and let the audience read it themselves. In contrast, I have also attended a couple of talks where the speakers (typically mathematicians) showcase a slide filled with equations and spend less than 2 minutes explaining it before moving on! Talk about making flawed assumptions about background qualifications.
To summarize, these are some things to consider before giving your talk.
Thank you for sticking with me to the end. Hope you enjoyed it!
