I’m writing this on my way back from a day’s training at Imperial College, in London. I spent some time working with PhD students looking with them at how they could make better oral conference papers – presentations of their work, in other words.
As an (ex-) academic myself it’s always gratifying to see people so enthusiastic and keen to not only move science on but to tell people about it. It did show up, starkly in some cases however, that experts have a particular problem when it comes to being a presenter – they know too much.
Eh? How can that be? Every presentation skills trainer in the world (and any wannabe!) will tell you in their hints-and-tips “Know your material inside out”. True, as far as it goes. The problem for experts lies in deciding which material is to be included in the presentation. That kind of choice is really hard for people who’ve spent months and months working on something (or even years): after all, if it’s worth spending time like that on, it’s worth telling people about!
The problem is that if you tell people too much they take nothing in – they don’t just reach saturation and stop taking in things that are too much for them… they ‘give up’ and write off pretty much everything. So what to do as an expert? Well, there’s a great quote I like from a Disney Imagineer: “perspective is worth 80 IQ points”… which is pretty much the tip! :) Get some perspective: before you actually design and/or write your presentation, take a looooong hard look at what you need to say. Pretend you’re explaining it to a very smart child, someone with plenty of intellegence and a natural curiosity but who doesn’t know your field at all. If a smart 12 year old can understand it, you’re probably in the right ball-park!
Okay, so don’t take me too literally here, but you get the idea, I’m sure!
