Making a presentation to an audience is important to get your ideas through, and while communication is a basic human trait, communicating effectively requires some thoughts (TED talk speakers go through a thorough training to get their point across.)
Here are a few things learned, for the use of postdocs where one can easily drown everyone else. These are based on my experience, but there are many resources around the web to draw from.
Some practical presentation rules
(These are stretch goals; I rarely follow these rules myself, but they are useful if you don’t know where to start.)
Use 16:9 format (these days most presentations are online, and most screen are wide)Start with an outline.Often, using the title to summarize the main point of the slide is a good use of the title.No text should be smaller than 18pts.Use animations sparingly, to expose your thoughts point by point. Avoid fancy animation or transition between slidesNo more than one slide per minute (if there’s more, you can probably merge a few points) Continue reading