presentation conference how long

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.17(12); 2021 Dec

Ten simple rules for effective presentation slides

Kristen m. naegle.

Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

Introduction

The “presentation slide” is the building block of all academic presentations, whether they are journal clubs, thesis committee meetings, short conference talks, or hour-long seminars. A slide is a single page projected on a screen, usually built on the premise of a title, body, and figures or tables and includes both what is shown and what is spoken about that slide. Multiple slides are strung together to tell the larger story of the presentation. While there have been excellent 10 simple rules on giving entire presentations [ 1 , 2 ], there was an absence in the fine details of how to design a slide for optimal effect—such as the design elements that allow slides to convey meaningful information, to keep the audience engaged and informed, and to deliver the information intended and in the time frame allowed. As all research presentations seek to teach, effective slide design borrows from the same principles as effective teaching, including the consideration of cognitive processing your audience is relying on to organize, process, and retain information. This is written for anyone who needs to prepare slides from any length scale and for most purposes of conveying research to broad audiences. The rules are broken into 3 primary areas. Rules 1 to 5 are about optimizing the scope of each slide. Rules 6 to 8 are about principles around designing elements of the slide. Rules 9 to 10 are about preparing for your presentation, with the slides as the central focus of that preparation.

Rule 1: Include only one idea per slide

Each slide should have one central objective to deliver—the main idea or question [ 3 – 5 ]. Often, this means breaking complex ideas down into manageable pieces (see Fig 1 , where “background” information has been split into 2 key concepts). In another example, if you are presenting a complex computational approach in a large flow diagram, introduce it in smaller units, building it up until you finish with the entire diagram. The progressive buildup of complex information means that audiences are prepared to understand the whole picture, once you have dedicated time to each of the parts. You can accomplish the buildup of components in several ways—for example, using presentation software to cover/uncover information. Personally, I choose to create separate slides for each piece of information content I introduce—where the final slide has the entire diagram, and I use cropping or a cover on duplicated slides that come before to hide what I’m not yet ready to include. I use this method in order to ensure that each slide in my deck truly presents one specific idea (the new content) and the amount of the new information on that slide can be described in 1 minute (Rule 2), but it comes with the trade-off—a change to the format of one of the slides in the series often means changes to all slides.

Top left: A background slide that describes the background material on a project from my lab. The slide was created using a PowerPoint Design Template, which had to be modified to increase default text sizes for this figure (i.e., the default text sizes are even worse than shown here). Bottom row: The 2 new slides that break up the content into 2 explicit ideas about the background, using a central graphic. In the first slide, the graphic is an explicit example of the SH2 domain of PI3-kinase interacting with a phosphorylation site (Y754) on the PDGFR to describe the important details of what an SH2 domain and phosphotyrosine ligand are and how they interact. I use that same graphic in the second slide to generalize all binding events and include redundant text to drive home the central message (a lot of possible interactions might occur in the human proteome, more than we can currently measure). Top right highlights which rules were used to move from the original slide to the new slide. Specific changes as highlighted by Rule 7 include increasing contrast by changing the background color, increasing font size, changing to sans serif fonts, and removing all capital text and underlining (using bold to draw attention). PDGFR, platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

Rule 2: Spend only 1 minute per slide

When you present your slide in the talk, it should take 1 minute or less to discuss. This rule is really helpful for planning purposes—a 20-minute presentation should have somewhere around 20 slides. Also, frequently giving your audience new information to feast on helps keep them engaged. During practice, if you find yourself spending more than a minute on a slide, there’s too much for that one slide—it’s time to break up the content into multiple slides or even remove information that is not wholly central to the story you are trying to tell. Reduce, reduce, reduce, until you get to a single message, clearly described, which takes less than 1 minute to present.

Rule 3: Make use of your heading

When each slide conveys only one message, use the heading of that slide to write exactly the message you are trying to deliver. Instead of titling the slide “Results,” try “CTNND1 is central to metastasis” or “False-positive rates are highly sample specific.” Use this landmark signpost to ensure that all the content on that slide is related exactly to the heading and only the heading. Think of the slide heading as the introductory or concluding sentence of a paragraph and the slide content the rest of the paragraph that supports the main point of the paragraph. An audience member should be able to follow along with you in the “paragraph” and come to the same conclusion sentence as your header at the end of the slide.

Rule 4: Include only essential points

While you are speaking, audience members’ eyes and minds will be wandering over your slide. If you have a comment, detail, or figure on a slide, have a plan to explicitly identify and talk about it. If you don’t think it’s important enough to spend time on, then don’t have it on your slide. This is especially important when faculty are present. I often tell students that thesis committee members are like cats: If you put a shiny bauble in front of them, they’ll go after it. Be sure to only put the shiny baubles on slides that you want them to focus on. Putting together a thesis meeting for only faculty is really an exercise in herding cats (if you have cats, you know this is no easy feat). Clear and concise slide design will go a long way in helping you corral those easily distracted faculty members.

Rule 5: Give credit, where credit is due

An exception to Rule 4 is to include proper citations or references to work on your slide. When adding citations, names of other researchers, or other types of credit, use a consistent style and method for adding this information to your slides. Your audience will then be able to easily partition this information from the other content. A common mistake people make is to think “I’ll add that reference later,” but I highly recommend you put the proper reference on the slide at the time you make it, before you forget where it came from. Finally, in certain kinds of presentations, credits can make it clear who did the work. For the faculty members heading labs, it is an effective way to connect your audience with the personnel in the lab who did the work, which is a great career booster for that person. For graduate students, it is an effective way to delineate your contribution to the work, especially in meetings where the goal is to establish your credentials for meeting the rigors of a PhD checkpoint.

Rule 6: Use graphics effectively

As a rule, you should almost never have slides that only contain text. Build your slides around good visualizations. It is a visual presentation after all, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, on the flip side, don’t muddy the point of the slide by putting too many complex graphics on a single slide. A multipanel figure that you might include in a manuscript should often be broken into 1 panel per slide (see Rule 1 ). One way to ensure that you use the graphics effectively is to make a point to introduce the figure and its elements to the audience verbally, especially for data figures. For example, you might say the following: “This graph here shows the measured false-positive rate for an experiment and each point is a replicate of the experiment, the graph demonstrates …” If you have put too much on one slide to present in 1 minute (see Rule 2 ), then the complexity or number of the visualizations is too much for just one slide.

Rule 7: Design to avoid cognitive overload

The type of slide elements, the number of them, and how you present them all impact the ability for the audience to intake, organize, and remember the content. For example, a frequent mistake in slide design is to include full sentences, but reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly), as a result of cognitive overload [ 4 ]. The visual channel is separate, allowing images/videos to be processed with auditory information without cognitive overload [ 6 ] (Rule 6). As presentations are an exercise in listening, and not reading, do what you can to optimize the ability of the audience to listen. Use words sparingly as “guide posts” to you and the audience about major points of the slide. In fact, you can add short text fragments, redundant with the verbal component of the presentation, which has been shown to improve retention [ 7 ] (see Fig 1 for an example of redundant text that avoids cognitive overload). Be careful in the selection of a slide template to minimize accidentally adding elements that the audience must process, but are unimportant. David JP Phillips argues (and effectively demonstrates in his TEDx talk [ 5 ]) that the human brain can easily interpret 6 elements and more than that requires a 500% increase in human cognition load—so keep the total number of elements on the slide to 6 or less. Finally, in addition to the use of short text, white space, and the effective use of graphics/images, you can improve ease of cognitive processing further by considering color choices and font type and size. Here are a few suggestions for improving the experience for your audience, highlighting the importance of these elements for some specific groups:

• Use high contrast colors and simple backgrounds with low to no color—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment.
• Use sans serif fonts and large font sizes (including figure legends), avoid italics, underlining (use bold font instead for emphasis), and all capital letters—for persons with dyslexia or visual impairment [ 8 ].
• Use color combinations and palettes that can be understood by those with different forms of color blindness [ 9 ]. There are excellent tools available to identify colors to use and ways to simulate your presentation or figures as they might be seen by a person with color blindness (easily found by a web search).
• In this increasing world of virtual presentation tools, consider practicing your talk with a closed captioning system capture your words. Use this to identify how to improve your speaking pace, volume, and annunciation to improve understanding by all members of your audience, but especially those with a hearing impairment.

Rule 8: Design the slide so that a distracted person gets the main takeaway

It is very difficult to stay focused on a presentation, especially if it is long or if it is part of a longer series of talks at a conference. Audience members may get distracted by an important email, or they may start dreaming of lunch. So, it’s important to look at your slide and ask “If they heard nothing I said, will they understand the key concept of this slide?” The other rules are set up to help with this, including clarity of the single point of the slide (Rule 1), titling it with a major conclusion (Rule 3), and the use of figures (Rule 6) and short text redundant to your verbal description (Rule 7). However, with each slide, step back and ask whether its main conclusion is conveyed, even if someone didn’t hear your accompanying dialog. Importantly, ask if the information on the slide is at the right level of abstraction. For example, do you have too many details about the experiment, which hides the conclusion of the experiment (i.e., breaking Rule 1)? If you are worried about not having enough details, keep a slide at the end of your slide deck (after your conclusions and acknowledgments) with the more detailed information that you can refer to during a question and answer period.

Rule 9: Iteratively improve slide design through practice

Well-designed slides that follow the first 8 rules are intended to help you deliver the message you intend and in the amount of time you intend to deliver it in. The best way to ensure that you nailed slide design for your presentation is to practice, typically a lot. The most important aspects of practicing a new presentation, with an eye toward slide design, are the following 2 key points: (1) practice to ensure that you hit, each time through, the most important points (for example, the text guide posts you left yourself and the title of the slide); and (2) practice to ensure that as you conclude the end of one slide, it leads directly to the next slide. Slide transitions, what you say as you end one slide and begin the next, are important to keeping the flow of the “story.” Practice is when I discover that the order of my presentation is poor or that I left myself too few guideposts to remember what was coming next. Additionally, during practice, the most frequent things I have to improve relate to Rule 2 (the slide takes too long to present, usually because I broke Rule 1, and I’m delivering too much information for one slide), Rule 4 (I have a nonessential detail on the slide), and Rule 5 (I forgot to give a key reference). The very best type of practice is in front of an audience (for example, your lab or peers), where, with fresh perspectives, they can help you identify places for improving slide content, design, and connections across the entirety of your talk.

Rule 10: Design to mitigate the impact of technical disasters

The real presentation almost never goes as we planned in our heads or during our practice. Maybe the speaker before you went over time and now you need to adjust. Maybe the computer the organizer is having you use won’t show your video. Maybe your internet is poor on the day you are giving a virtual presentation at a conference. Technical problems are routinely part of the practice of sharing your work through presentations. Hence, you can design your slides to limit the impact certain kinds of technical disasters create and also prepare alternate approaches. Here are just a few examples of the preparation you can do that will take you a long way toward avoiding a complete fiasco:

• Save your presentation as a PDF—if the version of Keynote or PowerPoint on a host computer cause issues, you still have a functional copy that has a higher guarantee of compatibility.
• In using videos, create a backup slide with screen shots of key results. For example, if I have a video of cell migration, I’ll be sure to have a copy of the start and end of the video, in case the video doesn’t play. Even if the video worked, you can pause on this backup slide and take the time to highlight the key results in words if someone could not see or understand the video.
• Avoid animations, such as figures or text that flash/fly-in/etc. Surveys suggest that no one likes movement in presentations [ 3 , 4 ]. There is likely a cognitive underpinning to the almost universal distaste of pointless animations that relates to the idea proposed by Kosslyn and colleagues that animations are salient perceptual units that captures direct attention [ 4 ]. Although perceptual salience can be used to draw attention to and improve retention of specific points, if you use this approach for unnecessary/unimportant things (like animation of your bullet point text, fly-ins of figures, etc.), then you will distract your audience from the important content. Finally, animations cause additional processing burdens for people with visual impairments [ 10 ] and create opportunities for technical disasters if the software on the host system is not compatible with your planned animation.

Conclusions

These rules are just a start in creating more engaging presentations that increase audience retention of your material. However, there are wonderful resources on continuing on the journey of becoming an amazing public speaker, which includes understanding the psychology and neuroscience behind human perception and learning. For example, as highlighted in Rule 7, David JP Phillips has a wonderful TEDx talk on the subject [ 5 ], and “PowerPoint presentation flaws and failures: A psychological analysis,” by Kosslyn and colleagues is deeply detailed about a number of aspects of human cognition and presentation style [ 4 ]. There are many books on the topic, including the popular “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds [ 11 ]. Finally, although briefly touched on here, the visualization of data is an entire topic of its own that is worth perfecting for both written and oral presentations of work, with fantastic resources like Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” [ 12 ] or the article “Visualization of Biomedical Data” by O’Donoghue and colleagues [ 13 ].

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the countless presenters, colleagues, students, and mentors from which I have learned a great deal from on effective presentations. Also, a thank you to the wonderful resources published by organizations on how to increase inclusivity. A special thanks to Dr. Jason Papin and Dr. Michael Guertin on early feedback of this editorial.

Funding Statement

The author received no specific funding for this work.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

Partner Center

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

What are the key features of a short (15 min) conference presentation?

I am preparing to give a conference presentation from scratch.

What is an effective ratio of introduction / methods / results / conclusion slides?

How can I balance the details of research without loosing the audience on key points?

In my experience, 90% of conference talks are dull and there may be one or two at any given conference that are really inspiring. What makes a "great" talk?

• presentation

• 4 The LaTeX Beamer User's Guide contains useful hints on short conference presentations. Those are applicable even if you use another tool to actually prepare the presentation. See tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/beamer/doc/… –  gerrit Commented Oct 4, 2012 at 7:17
• 2 Don't have too many slides. It's my pet hate when speakers have 50 slides for a 15 minute talk. –  csgillespie Commented Oct 4, 2012 at 8:09
• A tangent to consider: Writing and Speaking . –  user568 Commented Oct 4, 2012 at 12:51

11 Answers 11

(edited to extract the key points from the main reference)

Ian Parberry's guidelines were always essential for me. Firstly I will give a personal replies to your answers and subsequently I will extract the main points of the Ian's guidelines which are the basis for my answer.

Personal perspective

My own rule of thumb is to allocate 2-3 minutes per slide, which gives max. 6-8 slides including the envelope (the "title" and the "end+questions?" ones). That is, we have about 5 real content slides of which for introduction I allocate 1 for motivation&context, and 1 to problem definition.

The body gets whatever it needs, but shouldn't exceed 4 slides, with at least a single one dedicated to a sketch of a worked example . The audience doesn't need to know how exactly I am doing the magic, I must however make them trust me and see what I am doing as plausible .

The summary/conclusion/future work gets 1 slide.

Stress the motivation, the relevance of the problem and only sketch your solution so that an example which you provide will be plausible enough.

Your talk is an advertisement for your paper. You are doing your best to assure that people learn something and you imprint some key points in their heads (the problem description and a sketch of the main idea solving it). You don't need to explain the details, just sketch the main principles. You want to compel the audience to either read your paper that day in the evening and base their own work on it (hence citations!), or ensure that sometime in the future when they will face a problem, they'll remember that there was this guy speaking about something along the same lines, so let's check it (hence possible citations!).

What makes a "great" talk?

For me, it's grounding in reality . Show me what impact your stuff has on me. Speak about an application I might care for, even if it will be only a hypothetical one. If the result cannot be framed as a machine, or software, such as a lot of (non-computational) game-theory, then speak about implications to the society. Strike whatever chord, which makes your results tangible . It all boils down to answering a single question for every single person in the audience: Why should I care?!

But even if you do the all the positive advice right, there's a more important point, namely what you shouldn't do. For example I tend to speak a lot (see my posts at this site :-) ). My main drill during preparation of a talk is to throw away everything non-essential. Moreover, I am often writing down notes about what not to say . Many otherwise great talks are ruined by the presenter speaking too much* and **showing off . I don't want to be impressed by your smartness, or charisma per se, I want you to simply educate me !

And finally the key points from the Ian Parberry's guidelines for giving a good talk, emphasis mine.

General advice

• Communicate the Key Ideas : select 1-2 main high-level ideas and present them in a crisp and crystal clear way.
• Don’t get Bogged Down in Details : do not even attempt to discuss the details, unless you you have brisk answers to possible questions you open that way.
• Structure Your Talk & Use a Top-down Approach : go the least-surprise path, i.e, the audience needs a story a wants to be able to follow it. The structure should stay crisp: 1) solid motivation/intro, 2) main points/body, 3) technicalities, if really necessary, 4) conclusion.
• Know Your Audience : allows you to skip some common-knowledge in the audience, as well as select what is important to them and what do they care for.

Structure of the talk

I added the emphasis to the points which I consider crucial.

The Introduction

• Define the Problem
• Motivate the Audience
• Introduce Terminology
• Discuss Earlier Work
• Emphasize the Contributions of your Paper
• Provide a Road-map
• Abstract the Major Results
• Explain the Significance of the Results
• Sketch a Proof of the Crucial Results

Technicalities

• Present a Key Lemma
• Present it Carefully

The Conclusion

• Hindsight is Clearer than Foresight
• Give Open Problems
• Indicate that your Talk is Over

• +1 for introducing a good reference. –  enthu Commented Sep 27, 2014 at 19:55

How can I balance the details of research without losing the audience on key points?

From my perspective, the key to giving a 15 minute talk is to omit all of the details. Many audience members don't care, the few who do can read your paper, and in any case it's impossible to convey any serious details clearly and correctly in such a short time. If you try, then much of the audience will stop paying attention; you'll end up wasting their time and missing a great opportunity to present your work. Instead, your goal should be to ensure that everyone leaves with some understanding of what you've done, and that some of them are inspired to learn more.

This means you should focus on the big picture. What did you do, how and why did you do it, and what have we learned from it? In mathematics, I'd focus on context, motivation, definitions, theorem statements, examples, and intuition. It's OK to give a brief proof outline or sketch, but nothing detailed or complicated. If you can't summarize it in a few sentences, it's too complicated.

There are various ways short talks can go wrong. For example, some of them try to compress 30 minutes of content into 15 minutes by talking fast and barely explaining anything, while others simply omit the background and context needed to understand the presentation. However, there's a common difficulty behind many bad talks: they focus on the speaker's desires and goals rather than the audience's. Ultimately, you need to design your presentation to fit the background and interests of the audience and the time available, rather than what you wish you could tell them.

• 2 Great advice on focusing on the big picture. For such short talks, especially on conferences, I'd focus more on the results than the methods. It's a great opportunity also to practice your elevator presentation -- describing shortly what you are working on to (almost) complete neophytes on a social gathering without being boring. –  mindcorrosive Commented Oct 4, 2012 at 7:26
• 13 On omitting detail: The point of a short research talk is to convince the audience to read your paper, not to make reading your paper unnecessary. –  JeffE Commented Oct 4, 2012 at 14:02
• +1 @JeffE . A 15 min. presentation is a kind of advertisement for your publication. –  Noble P. Abraham Commented Oct 5, 2012 at 16:13

While 15 minutes is on the longer side for what I'm about to suggest, I think it's still useful.

In a 15 minute presentation you don't have time to think of things to say on the fly. It's important that you have a story nailed down fairly tight. While you don't need a full script for what you're going to say, you should have a fairly detailed plan of what you're going to say (even upto key sentences and transitions).

As others have pointed out, you'll have to eliminate most details. THIS IS OK ! The audience will only (at best) get a high level idea of what your work is about and only the briefest glimmer of a technique or tool. So in order to decide what to say, you should ask yourself the following:

Why should I (the listener) care about your work ?

Answering this question will help you decide what to keep and what to throw.

As for your last question, a great talk is a strange mix of details, high level concepts, and inspiration. If it were easy to describe it, all talks would be great :). But if you shoot for a talk that people will remember, that is both more attainable, and easier to construct.

Consider the point of the talk; you want to convey to the audience what it is you did and what your results were. Similar to a paper, you'll want just enough background to bring those who aren't familiar with your subfield up to speed, and barely any conclusions as the audience will draw their own conclusions.

With that in mind, you'll want something similar to the following:

• 1-2 min — background
• 5-6 min — methods
• 3-4 min — results
• 1 min — conclusions, thanks, etc

Note that you'll probably want to leave some time for questions, so you should err on the side of shorter rather than longer.

From my experiences, you will want to really prepare for this. As discussed in more detail in this answer , this is really the main forum for you to sell your work. You'll want to make sure you put forward your best possible face. All the usual points related to public speaking apply here as well: talk slower (yes, slower... slower than that, even), be concise, be clear, make good use of slides, etc.

• Note the usual disclaimer that this may vary from field to field. –  eykanal Commented Oct 4, 2012 at 0:39

I think the other answers state it quite clearly: eliminate most details! Some key points I've found across different sources and observed at talks I've enjoyed:

You don't want to explain your paper, you want the audience to want to read your paper.

You need to be comfortable with your talk. I've attended great short highly technical talks, and great short high-level talks. What made the talks great was not the technical content, but the capability of the speaker to convey his/her enthusiasm for the content.

I particularly like AnonynousMathematician's "[bad talks] focus on the speaker's desires and goals rather than the audience's". At a conference, the audience is not here to judge you, or to evaluate your work, but to attend an hopefully interesting talk. The point is not to show how good you are.

It might depend on the technical field, but a good way to interest an audience is to present them with a problem, usually illustrated with a simple example, and then to give the guidelines of how you solved that problem.

Finally, read many advices you can find on this topic. For instance, I'd suggest you the page of Simon Peyton-Jones , recently pointed out by walkmanyi .

I think in any conference presentation (whether it is 10 minutes or 60 minutes), there are only two parts that are absolutely necessary:

What is the problem that you studied. Explain it as carefully as possible, in the simplest possible form; make it as easy to understand as possible. Do not assume that some parts of the setting are obvious to the audience; make everything explicit.

What is the new result that you obtained. Again, explain it as carefully as possible, in the simplest possible form. Proceed slowly; even if you could state the result in 5 seconds, spend much more time on it. Make sure the audience has enough time to digest what was your new main contribution.

If these parts necessarily take 15 minutes, it is OK. I do not think anything else is absolutely necessary.

Of course there are lots of things that would be nice to have, time permitting: background, motivation, related work, a very rough overview of some methods that you used to obtain the results, conclusions, etc. But none of these parts are as important as explaining what was the research question and what was the new result.

By the way, if it appears that this approach results in a boring talk, most likely your own idea of what is your research question is wrong . Think big, go one level up.

Example: You have studied thingy X (something technical and complicated) and your work shows that X has property Y (something easy to understand), and this is cool, as it is the first example of a thingy with property Y.

Problem: We study the properties of thingy X. (But explaining X takes forever. It is complicated, technical and boring. And why would you want to study it anyway.)

Result: We show X has property Y. (But now you would still have to explain what is Y. You are already running out of time, and you have already lost your audience.)

You feel like you would have wanted to talk about motivation, related work, and methods, but you are already overtime, and nobody is following anymore.

Problem: Is there a thingy with property Y? (Now this was much easier to explain. You have got plenty of time to also mention that this is a famous open question posed by Professor Bigname in 1950s.)

Result: Yes, we give the first example of such a thingy! (That was easy. And now to make sure that everyone gets the big news, you can spends some time explaining that in prior work others have come close, but nobody has been quite there.)

And now you still have lots of time left, so you can tell something about the particular thingy X that you put together. All of this is extra. You can be sketchy, just give some highlights of the main ideas. Everyone in the audience already knows where you are aiming at and what is the big picture; they can fill in the details or look it up in your paper if it matters.

Some things to think about (from the point of view of a mathematician, but I hope some of this might be relevant in other fields too): Does your main result have a special case or two that would be easier for your audience to understand than the general result (without being trivial)? If so, you might just present that (or those) special case(s), and add at the end one sentence to the effect that your full result is more general.

Does your result require terminology that people might not know? If so, does it really require that terminology, or could you perhaps get by without it? If you really need the terminology, budget enough time to explain it and, if possible, relate it to something your audience already knows.

The background information (previous results, open questions) that motivate your work is likely to be too much to present in full in the limited time available. Select just enough of that information to be understandable and to provide some (not necessarily all) motivation for your work. Having presented some motivation, you can add one sentence saying that there is additional motivation, which you don't have time to explain in the talk.

In two places, I've suggested adding a single sentence saying "there's more"; you should indicate your willingness (or even eagerness) to discuss the "more" later with anyone who is interested.

A nice discussion on this can be found here: http://presentations.catalysis.nl/presentations/presentation.php .

If your talk is in mathematics, you might also want to look at https://mathoverflow.net/questions/29866/presenting-a-paper-dos-and-donts .

Some other tips I've heard:

• Use one slide per minute. For a 15-minute talk, use only 15 slides.
• The first part of your talk should be understandable by any adult (if your target audience consists of adults). The next part should be understandable by your peers (same field as yours, e.g., mathematics, but not necessarily the same subfield, e.g., number theory). The next part should be understandable by your peers working in the same subfield. The last part should be understandable by you. (Although some believe this last part is too much).

My goal when giving a talk is to convey information in a way none have presented or expressed before. The constraints being:

• easy to understand for complete novices
• interesting for experts

My mindset is also to aim for 10-12 minutes when allocated 15 minutes. It is always better to finish early than it is to go over your time. It ALWAYS leaves a bad taste in my mouth when a speaker exceeds their allotted time. It's disrespectful and inconsiderate of other people's time.

I also subscribe to the 1 slide per 1 minute MAX philosophy. In terms of time per section (borrowing from @eykanal's reply), but whichever section has your contribution then the time spent there should be doubled (e.g., I assume in the Methods section):

• 2 min Background
• 4 min Methods
• 2 min Evaluation
• 2 min Results
• 2 min Conclusions
• 1 min Future Work

There are many good answers. I especially like the second half of the answer from @walkmanyi, especially as concerns the structure of a short talk. I disagree with most the time amounts given. I have found great success with:

• 7 minutes of background
• 5 minutes combined methods, results, conclusions
• 3 minutes of questions

If a separate time is given to questions, then 9 to 6 in favor of background.

An interesting comment about presentations can be found here . The author is professor of Computer Science, thus some things may not apply in all cases. Moreover, I think that the advice is very extreme, which actually makes it interesting.

In the case of the area of management, this resource may be helpful. These notes were the result of a session at one of the Academy of Management meetings.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged conference writing presentation ..

• Featured on Meta
• Bringing clarity to status tag usage on meta sites
• Announcing a change to the data-dump process

Hot Network Questions

• The question about the existence of an infinite non-trivial controversy
• "It never works" vs "It better work"
• Can you equip or unequip a weapon before or after a Bonus Action?
• Why is LiCl a hypovalent covalent molecule?
• Euler should be credited with PNT?
• Current in a circuit is 50% lower than predicted by Kirchhoff's law
• Why isn't a confidence level of anything >50% "good enough"?
• Did Babylon 4 actually do anything in the first shadow war?
• Does the average income in the US drop by $9,500 if you exclude the ten richest Americans?
• Is my magic enough to keep a person without skin alive for a month?
• What are the most commonly used markdown tags when doing online role playing chats?
• How do I learn more about rocketry?
• Largest number possible with +, -, ÷
• In which town of Europe (Germany ?) were this 2 photos taken during WWII?
• How can I play MechWarrior 2?
• Is it a good idea to perform I2C Communication in the ISR?
• How to Interpret Statistically Non-Significant Estimates and Rule Out Large Effects?
• Pull up resistor question
• Confusion about time dilation
• Manhattan distance
• Hashable and ordered enums to describe states of a process
• Transform a list of rules into a list of function definitions
• What does 'ex' mean in this context
• Is reading sheet music difficult?

• Event Website Publish a modern and mobile friendly event website.
• Registration & Payments Collect registrations & online payments for your event.
• Abstract Management Collect and manage all your abstract submissions.
• Peer Reviews Easily distribute and manage your peer reviews.
• Conference Program Effortlessly build & publish your event program.
• Virtual Poster Sessions Host engaging virtual poster sessions.
• Customer Success Stories
• Wall of Love ❤️

15 Best Tips for Presenting at a Conference

Published on 18 Nov 2021

Presenting at a conference is an important part of a researcher’s life: it allows you to share all the work you’ve been doing for months or years.

At the same time, it also exposes some intimate aspects of yourself to the outside world, like your thought process, your level of knowledge on a topic, or your ability to structure ideas.

I personally found myself frightened about presenting on multiple occasions. I remember my first seminar at the beginning of my master's degree in biochemistry. Coming from a bachelor in ecology, I felt like an imposter in the new department and was scared others would judge my level of knowledge or the quality of my presentation. Of course, these were only negative projections I was making in my mind, but they reflect the stressful vibe one can feel when preparing to give a talk.

On the positive side, a successful presentation leads to a better understanding of your work by the audience. This generates insightful discussions that can provide ideas about what the next steps of your research should be or clues to solve roadblocks.

It also leaves a good impression on the work done at your lab which can attract new collaborators. Also, getting your work noticed, especially at large conferences, can lead to your publications being more cited. If you’re a student, you can be rewarded with a presentation prize that will boost your curriculum when applying for scholarships.

Above all, learning to communicate, especially to the general public, is a valued skill.

So how can you nail your next presentation? There are no magic pills, but in this article, we’ll share some important tips to help you deliver the best presentation at your next event.

1- Do not start by working on your slides

It is very easy to get lost in your slides if you do not plan first. That is why you need to outline your key ideas and the order in which you want to present them BEFORE jumping into building slides in PowerPoint (or another platform).

You can start with bullet points, a flowchart, or something similar. The crucial part here is to make sure you are laying out the information and not just throwing it on the slides as they come to your mind. It is easy to get lost if you just keep adding slide after slide without any concern for length and/or connections between the information.

You can use sticky notes, paper planners, online flowchart generators, or other tools to help you in the layout phase.

Then, equally important to the key ideas is how you tie all of that content together. You should plan a logical transition and a progression between each idea. This will help you define a common thread and establish the flow of your presentation. Ultimately, it will help the audience capture the message you’re sharing.

In summary, knowing what you want to talk about is key. So before working on your slide deck and your handouts, develop this layout that highlights and connects the information you want to share.

2- Have a duration in mind

You’ll have a limited amount of time to get your message across, so you have to plan your presentation around that time frame. If you have 15 minutes to present your work, plan a presentation that lasts slightly less than that time limit.

Another tip for presentations is to use a timer while presenting to ensure you don’t go overtime.

A lot of people do not plan their time wisely and end up skipping slides in their presentation or going overtime. And guess what? Your audience knows when you skip content because you ran out of time. It comes off as unprofessional and may affect the way people see your work. So take your time preparing your presentation around your time constraints.

If your initial mockup is longer than what it should be, start by analyzing what information could be deleted or ways to get the information across using fewer words. 

It’s often just a matter of focusing on the details that matter the most. Don’t explain all the details of the methodology or the results if it doesn’t add to the story. Keep that for smaller group discussions or during the Q&A period. 

3- Use visuals to your advantage

Visuals are a must in any presentation. Whether it is an image, a chart, a graphic, or a video, visuals help with interpretation and can be an effective way to get your message across or grab the audience's attention.

Just because you’re presenting at an academic conference, it doesn’t mean you can’t use images, videos, or even gifs to help get the message across.

Most people deal better with visuals than words , especially when the information is heavy with data and numbers. But even with visuals, remember to keep it simple. The whole purpose of using visual aids is to help your audience understand the message and not to confuse them with too much information. 

If you’re presenting figures or graphs, remember to use the pointer to highlight the key points while you explain your slide. This is something that is easy to forget when the stress level is high, but it can be a good way to stay grounded and focused on the presentation.

4- Know your audience

In any academic conference, knowing your audience puts you one step closer to delivering an effective presentation. Do your research when starting to prepare your presentation.

Skimming the proceedings of past editions of a conference can reveal past participant lists and their profile. Different conferences have different proportions of undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, or principal investigators. Knowing the proportions of each category can indicate the level of knowledge on certain topics and if you need to spend time explaining certain areas so they understand the rest of the presentation or not.

If you find the abstracts, the Powerpoints, or the recordings of talks from previous editions, it can also help you adjust the depth in which you can go when explaining certain concepts.

Do not fall under the trap of assuming your audience knows nothing about your research subject. If they are at your research conference, it is most likely that they possess knowledge of (and interest in) what you are talking about. So, skip the basics that everyone knows if you feel you can.

Use jargon that is easily understood by the community at large and make sure you define less common abbreviations.

Knowing your audience is not always an easy task. If you’re not sure if your audience is familiar with a specific topic, don't be afraid to ask them! It will make everyone feel more involved and you will get their attention for the rest of the presentation. The bottom line, adapt your message to the audience.

5- Practice, practice, and practice again

No one should know your presentation better than you. When preparing for a particular conference, rehearse your talking points out loud and make sure you feel 100% comfortable with the information laid out on your slides. 

In addition, make sure the key ideas and the logical transition between them are crystal clear. One of the worst things that can happen to presenters is getting lost in their own presentation. 

You should practice your speech out loud to become familiar with the words as this will help your tone and confidence. When you sound confident, people are keener to listen to what you are saying.

One additional common but useful tip is to record yourself while practicing. It will help you know where you're lacking and what needs to be improved. 

 For example, some people tend to talk really fast or jump on sentences while others tend to ignore full stops. No matter what the issues are, recording yourself is a great tactic to find and address them.

6- Present it to a friend or colleague

Outside of practicing it out loud on your own, practice it in front of your colleagues. It will give you an experience that will resemble the real presentation the most.

While you present, notice their facial expressions. They can reveal parts of your presentation that are unclear. Tell them not to interrupt you during the presentation, but tell them to note down their suggestions or questions for the end. Make sure to use a timer to measure how you’re doing on time.

Some people like to present to someone completely detached from the topic. The idea is that if people who are not completely familiar with the subject can follow your presentation, people in the field should be able to easily follow it as well. 

No matter which option you choose, this exercise will help if you have difficulties speaking in public. Do not be afraid of doing these multiple times before your presentation and always ask for honest feedback. The more you practice, the more confident and more fluent you will be.

During my Ph.D., we often presented to our lab members and went through a Q&A section. Not only was it a good opportunity to practice the presenting skills, but it was also a moment to discuss specific aspects and prepare for potential questions. I remember in some instances, the feedback led to reshuffling the ideas completely in a way that made more sense.

7- Appearances matter

Even though people are coming to your presentation because they are interested in your research, appearances matter. The way you speak, how you interact with your audience, and even what you wear, make an impact. Make sure you wear comfortable clothes. 

 If you’re presenting at an online event, make sure the lighting comes from in front of you and not from behind or it will make your face appear darker. Not seeing a presenter clearly can distract the audience and decrease attention.

Also make sure there isn’t anything distracting in the background, like television or someone walking. The best background is usually solid-colored walls.

8- Sleep and eat well before the event

Get a good night of sleep the night before the event. You will feel well-rested and ready to tackle the presentation. It can be tempting to practice your slides and go over your presentation late at night, but it is sometimes better to get a good night's sleep.

In addition, make sure to eat well. You don’t want to feel dizzy or be occupied thinking about food when you should be thinking about the presentation.

Lastly, have a bottle of water close to you while you’re presenting. That will allow you to take pauses when needed and give your audience time to absorb the information after you jump into the next slide or argument.

9- Have a backup

If you have your presentation stored on a hard drive, make sure to have an extra copy on the cloud and vice-versa. Hard drives can break and technical difficulties can occur with cloud storage, so always have a backup just in case. 

Depending on the guidelines of the event, you can also send a copy of your presentation to the organizer and/or colleague. Send yourself a copy of the presentation by email as well.

A lot of people also have a paper copy of their presentation. That’s the last case alternative but also nice to have. If you are in a poster presentation, this may be harder to achieve.

If you have videos in your presentation, check out if the platform and/or venue can display that, especially the audio (if it’s important). Not all software or places have the necessary (or compatible) technology to display your presentation as they should.

10- Use body language

Body language has an essential role in presentations, especially online ones. Make sure you use body language the right way, otherwise it can be distracting for your audience. That includes fidgeting, repeatedly fixing your hair or clothes, among other things.

In academic conferences, the presentations are usually heavy on the information and data side, so it is important that presenters take advantage of tone of voice, gestures, and other body language resources to get their point across.

It is best to keep eye contact with people in the audience. This way, they will feel you are talking TO them and not AT them. But make sure to alternate and not stare at one single person throughout the whole presentation. 

Be aware of your posture and if you have any notes, make sure to either hold them or have them at eyesight. It is common to have notecards during a conference talk, but it is important to know your presentation and not depend on the notes.

11- Encourage your audience to interact with you

A big part of your presentation is for you to talk about your research. People are there to listen to you and absorb information, but they are also there to make the most out of the experience, and that includes engaging and asking questions.

Prepare yourself to answer questions from the audience. It is impossible to cover everything in a short presentation, so try to cover as much as possible and if there are questions you think will arise from the audience, prepare to answer them.

Depending on the type of presentation and what’s expected, you can keep questions for the end or allow questions during the presentation.

If there is a question that you do not have the answer to, it’s ok to say it. It’s better to offer to look more into it and get back to them rather than trying to improvise an answer. Provide your contact information in the final slide or at the end of your presentation. Some participants can reach out to you if they have any questions, suggestions, or opportunities that could be beneficial to you.

If you are giving an online presentation, invite participants to ask a question through the conference platform or website. For example, Fourwaves has a built-in Q&A section on each presentation page where presenters and participants can interact.

12- Structure your presentation and let your audience know

Let your audience know what you will be covering in your presentation. Have a clear outline of the topics and make sure to have this journey clear so the audience understands where you are taking them.

You can start the presentation by highlighting the key messages, but don’t forget to have a summary at the end (your conclusion), where you reiterate the main points of your presentation.

13- Pay attention to design

Adhere to the following basic design principles when building your slides. Avoid distracting colors and mixing more than 2 colors in each slide. If you use a light background, you should use a dark font and vice-versa. Make sure the font size is also big enough and that you are not stuffing too much information into a slide.

A good rule of thumb for your slides is to have about 5 bullet points on each one and give enough time for people to read through them if they need to. Most of the information should be coming out of your mouth and not described in the slides. The slides are just a summary (the bullet points) of what you will cover.

If you are adding visuals, make sure they are big enough so people can see them and they are not covering any information.

14- Take other presentations as an example

You have probably been part of dozens and dozens of presentations in a lifetime. Is there something you liked a lot in those or something you hated? If yes, write it down. If it is positive, strive to replicate that in your presentation. If it is negative, discard it.

If you are taking part in an annual event, you may be able to access presentations from the years before and draw conclusions from there. You can also look for similar poster presentations or templates and get inspiration from those.

Keep in mind that every person has a presentation style. Learn the basic guidelines and find what works best for you.

15- Rely on storytelling

Storytelling is relying on stories (narrative) to talk about something (e.g. personal anecdotes, metaphors, comparisons, etc.). People rely on stories for mnemonic purposes and most of the time, it is easier to remember a story or an analogy than it is to remember a specific situation.

No matter what the topic is, analogies make it easier for people to understand facts. Whenever possible, try to use a metaphor or a comparison

Bonus tip - Remember to stop and breathe during your presentation

It’s normal to feel stressed even if you’re super well prepared and that you know your topic inside out.

Make sure to take the time to pause in between slides and to take a good slow deep breath. It will help you stay focused throughout the presentation.

Practice this during your rehearsals. Not talking for 3-4 seconds can seem long for you, but your audience will appreciate it and it will help you feel calmer.

At the core, preparing for a conference presentation is no different than preparing for any type of public speaking assignment. You need to understand the topic very well, research and practice what you are going to say, and know your audience, among other things.  

Most of all, remember: no one is born with great presentation skills, so give yourself room to improve.

Mastering the Art of Writing an Effective Conference Abstract

Conference abstracts are crucial in the world of academic research and professional health associati...

5 Best Event Registration Platforms for Your Next Conference

By having one software to organize registrations and submissions, a pediatric health center runs aro...

• Communicating in STEM Disciplines
• Features of Academic STEM Writing
• STEM Writing Tips
• Academic Integrity in STEM
• Strategies for Writing
• Science Writing Videos – YouTube Channel
• Educator Resources
• Lesson Plans, Activities and Assignments
• Strategies for Teaching Writing
• Grading Techniques

10 tips for the 10-minute conference presentation

July 21, 2016

By Elizabeth Saewyc

You’ve spent months on your research, but have only 10 minutes to present it to the world. Yikes! But, fear not! There are some easy, practical ways to make it memorable.

In a striking back-to-back comparison showcased in the video below, I give a standard 10-minute research talk riddled with features that characterize too many dry scientific presentations. You’ll nod your head as you recognize them from your own and colleagues’ past efforts. Then watch, as I transform the same material in a subsequent presentation that showcases the potential of strong science communication to bring research alive with a little preparation. And no, we’re not talking about animating your slide deck. This is about the power of words to truly communicate research.

RESEARCH TOOLBOX; 10 Tips for a Dynamic 10-Minute Conference Presentation from UBC Nursing .

My top 10 tips are:

• Aside from the “I have nothing to disclose” statement, don’t start by thanking by name all the people on your first slide (your co-authors). Instead, say good morning or good afternoon, whichever is relevant, then start your presentation with a bit of dramatic statement – either the scope of the issue, something people don’t normally think of, something that sounds contrary to what people normally believe but hints at your results, or at least makes it clear why this research was needed. It’s a way of being compelling and catching attention, it projects confidence and draws people in. Not humour, though, that’s hard to pull off.
• The slides should illustrate your presentation points, not be your presentation. They should have no more than 3-4 points per slide, in phrases, not sentences, and no more than two lines per point (preferably one). Use bar charts or graphs or pictures where you can, with limited words.
• Don’t read the slides, make the points with slightly different words, and expand on them a bit.
• Speak slowly, way, way slower than you think you need to – we will always talk faster during a public speaking situation, so it’s important to speak slowly and clearly, especially since there will be people who have English as a second language in the audience, and are likely jet-lagged. Most of us speak at 120 words a minute, so that means, for a 10 minute presentation 1200 words max. Write out your script so that you have exactly those many words—the minute you digress, you run over time.
• Don’t be afraid to make a short statement with a bar chart or table on the slide, like “As you can see from this table, Southeast Asian girls reported poorer mental health than boys,” and then fall silent for a bit, letting people absorb the info before you switch to the next slide (this can heighten the drama/attention, and makes you look very polished and confident–even if you’re counting in your head how long to wait before you switch the slide and speak again!).
• Never, ever say, “okay, I know you can’t read this, but…” If it’s unreadable, too many lines, too small font, or too busy a table or figure, do not include it . Come up with a different way to convey the key points, because the minute you apologize for your slide, you’ve lost them.
• Avoid swooping transitions, nifty animations, cutesy cartoon graphics, and wild shifts of colour or font; anything that might make your audience seasick or dizzy won’t win you respect or attention.
• Remember to put in the “so what?” conclusion, or a concrete couple of clinical implications–or go back to your dramatic opening statement and bring it into the ending. If you’ve paced yourself with your 1200 words or fewer, you’ll have time to give the final punchline of what we should do now, or what we know now, because of this work.
• Say thank you! But don’t say, “I’d like to thank my supervisor, my committee, my colleagues, my family, my carpool, my dog…” and don’t mention the funding source, even if it’s listed on your last slide as an acknowledgment. Leave it for people to read during questions.
• Wear something bright red–a scarf, a tie, a blouse, a pocket handkerchief, a jacket, a dress; it draws the eye, enhances their alertness, and will help people find you afterwards to tell you what a fabulous job you did on your presentation, and what they liked about your study, or ask another question about it.

 About Elizabeth Saewyc

Read More | 342 Comments

Leave a Reply

• Electrophysiology Rigs
• Multiphoton Imaging
• Optogenetics and Uncaging
• Manipulators
• Microscopes
• Stages and Platforms
• By technique
• Electrophysiology
• Three-Photon Imaging
• Two-Photon Imaging
• Optogenetics
• Fluorescence Imaging
• Microinjection
• Network Studies
• Learning Zone
• Research Articles
• Events News
• Careers at Scientifica
• Research Jobs
• Company News
• Our Service & Support
• Distributors

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference

A scientific poster is a visual presentation that summarises your research findings and is typically displayed at conferences or academic events. Presenting one can be intimidating, but it's a valuable opportunity for feedback and confidence-building. Check out our top 9 top tips for successfully presenting your poster at a scientific conference.

Be welcoming

You should do your best to stand at your poster for the entirety of the conference poster session. If you do need to leave your poster for any reason, ensure you include your email address on it, so you can be contacted by conference attendees who may read your poster while you are not there. Read more tips for making your poster stand out here.

To make everyone feel welcome, stand to the side of your poster. This will make it easy for your potential audience to move closer and see the whole thing.

Think of your poster as a conversation starter. Smile and say hello to everyone who walks past and looks at you or your poster. Invite them to read more and, if they seem interested, ask if they would like you to talk them through it or if they have any questions.

Engage your audience

Remember to be enthusiastic - your research is exciting! Even towards the end of the poster session, when your energy levels may be lower, it is important to remain enthusiastic. If it is clear you find your work interesting, your audience are more likely to as well!

As you are presenting your poster, point to relevant parts of the poster so that people can follow as your talk through it. Try to avoid putting your hands in your pockets or behind your back.

Remember to also keep looking back at the audience, to keep them engaged and feeling involved in the presentation.

If you are already presenting your research to someone or a small group and someone else walks up, acknowledge them by making eye contact with them and smiling. Once you have finished with your initial visitors ask the newcomer if there was anything they missed that they would like a further explanation of, or whether they have any questions.

The most important aspect of presenting a poster at a conference is to make the most out of the opportunity you’ve been given. Who knows what might become of an interaction that you have in front of that notice board?

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Engage your audience

The “elevator” pitch

First impressions really count in poster presentations. To pique the interest of your potential audience you should have a very short synopsis (maximum three sentences and no longer than two minutes) of your research prepared, which contains three vital bits of information:

• What is your research topic?
• What have you found?
• Why is that important?

The aim here is to get your audience hooked and wanting further details. Keep the bigger picture in mind, as the audience first needs the background info to then get excited about the small details of your research. Make sure your pitch is punchy, intriguing and relevant.

Creating a story

Once you’ve reeled in your audience and they are eager to learn more, it’s time to build the narrative of your research. Like all great stories your research needs a beginning, a middle and an end. Aim for this to be 10 minutes long, or less.

The introduction should set the scene and introduce the main characters:

• What is the necessary background information about your research topic that the audience must know?
• How did this lead you to your research question, what were you hoping to find out and why?
• Who are the main characters (e.g. a disease, a drug, a cell type, a brain region, a technique)? What are the relevant parts of their “characteristics” to the story?

The middle section is the adventure, it answers:

• How did you get from your research question to your conclusion? Why did you choose to take that route?
• What did you find on your way? Were there any interesting twists to your research?

The final section is the conclusion to the story:

• What is the ultimate consequence of your journey? What does this mean for your characters?
• Is this really the end of the adventure or are there plenty more adventures still to come? What might they look like?

Remember: You are the narrator; it is up to you as the story teller to make the content both compelling and exciting. Attendees are not all experts in your field.; if you are unsure how familiar your audience is with your subject area, ask them.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Create a story

The importance of practice

Presenting your poster is ultimately a form of performance. In performances, whether they involve acting, music, sport or presenting, practice is a major factor in success. After all, however much of a cliché it is: practice makes perfect. Rehearse what you will say and practice presenting on your friends and family. Once you begin speaking at your poster session you will be pleased that you spent time preparing and practising.

Before the poster session starts make sure that you:

• Understand exactly what all the figures on the poster show, that you can explain them fully and know their full implications.
• Have your elevator pitch memorised
• Know all the key points to your research story without referring to written notes
• Are ready to answer likely questions with confidence, and know how to deal with difficult questions that you might not be able to answer fully.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Practice, practice, practice

Check the audience's understanding

Ask members of the audience whether you have been clear or if you should go into more detail, rather than asking if they understand, as this could make them feel stupid or ignorant.

For example, say something like “Have I been clear enough” or “should I go into more detail about……?” instead of “do you understand how this works?”

The handout

There are pros and cons to having a handout with additional supporting materials or key information from your poster. You must decide for yourself if it will be of benefit to you depending on several factors including:

• What is the purpose of your poster?
• What are you hoping to achieve with your presentation?
• Will it enhance your audience’s engagement with your research or not?

The major positive outcome of a handout is that gives your audience something to take away with them to remind them about you, your research and why they were interested in it. It also gives them a way to get in touch with you should they have further questions.

The main negative is that some people who may be interested and could benefit from speaking to you about your poster will take the leaflet, read it (or not) and never engage with your research again. It is an easy way for them to avoid talking to you, for whatever reason that may be.

If you decide to go ahead with a handout there are several items that should be included:

• The project title
• Your name and affiliation
• Your professional email address (and phone number if your happy for people to contact you that way)
• The key information from your poster (including a link to the relevant paper if it has already been published.
• Any supporting materials not included on the poster that may be of help.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: The handout

Expand your network

Look for opportunities to exchange contact information. If someone is particularly interested in your poster and wants to know all the details of your research, it may be better to suggest meeting them for a coffee after the poster session, or arranging another time for further discussions. This will ensure that other potential audience members don’t get bored and wander off without talking to you because they have been waiting too long.

Exchanging contact information and having further discussions can be a great way to expand your network and find potential collaborators for the future.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Expand your network

Dealing with feedback

It is important to welcome feedback, be prepared for discussion and not to be too defensive in the face of criticism.

If someone asks you a question or makes a comment that you don’t think is relevant, ask them to explain the relevance of their comment. They may have stumbled across something that you haven’t thought of because of their fresh perspective on the topic, or they might just not understand your research. Also, a negative comment or question might not actually be a criticism, but a genuine desire to understand why you’ve done something so they can fully interpret the poster. It is unlikely that someone has visited your poster to be vindictive, and if they have it is important not to engage them, shrug off their comments and move on to the next person who is genuinely interested.

Remember to thank the audience for listening and thank them for their feedback. People who have visited your poster could potentially be employers or colleagues in the future.

You got this!

In summary, presenting your poster at a conference is a chance to showcase your research, receive feedback, and connect with peers. Embrace the opportunity, be welcoming and enthusiastic, and enjoy the experience of sharing your work with others.

Neurowire blog posts

How to make your scientific posters stand out

Less is more: Advice for keeping your poster concise

10 tips for presenting your poster online at a virtual conference

How to get the most out of a scientific conference

9 simple and effective public speaking tips for scientists

Contact Form

* denotes required field

• Sign me up for the Scientifica newsletter to receive news based on the above interests
• I agree to my data being held and processed in accordance with the privacy policy *

0" x-text="errorMessage" class="tw-text-red-500">

Get more advice

Receive the latest tips straight to your inbox

• Language Requirements
• Creative Research Option for the PhD Dissertation
• Collaborative Programs
• Undergraduate Literature & Critical Theory Program
• How to Apply
• Safety Abroad
• Northrop Frye Professors
• Lectures & Webcasts
• Enrolment instructions
• Sessional Dates
• Current Complit Courses
• Course Descriptions
• Course Schedule
• Relevant Courses
• Our Faculty
• Biographies
• Faculty Login
• Postdoctoral Researchers
• Program Requirements
• Thesis Topics
• Registration
• SGS Funding Resources
• Arts & Science Awards
• Good Standing
• Field Proposals & Examination
• Defense Guide
• Academic Resources
• Study Space & Carrels
• Career Planning
• Student Publications
• Transverse journal
• Complit Student Blog
• Alumni profiles
• Alumni Theses
• Application instructions
• Health Insurance (UHIP)
• Instructions
• Requirements
• Faculty Job Postings
• Hiring Policy
• Unit 1 Positions (U of T HR and Equity)

The Conference Presentation

I. Conferences – Pluses and Minuses

-Conferences are good pre publication activities. They give you a chance to try out a short version of a paper (often one still in progress), to get some initial (peer) responses to your arguments, and to engage in dialogue. As well, sometimes committing yourself to give a conference paper serves to jump-start your writing of a scholarly essay (or thesis chapter).

-Since the formal talk is often an important part of our profession, giving a conference paper can be good professionalizing experience. In particular, since the job talk is now so often part of job candidacy (and many universities specifically ask candidates to present “a conference-style paper”), giving a conference paper can be good practice for that aspect of campus visits.

-Conferences also have a useful educational dimension. They supplement your reading of professional journals and secondary books by locating you within the immediate discourse in your field and allowing you to hear what questions are being asked right now—and how those questions are being framed.

-Conferences give you a chance to meet others in your field. These contacts could prove valuable if you need to ask a colleague a question about research or if you need to locate someone to vet a manuscript or provide a reference.

The Down Side:

-Conferences don’t count much as scholarship. While conference activity is considered desirable by committees looking at C.V.s when hiring or when engaged in tenure review, it is seen as part of one’s larger professional activity rather than as counting (much) towards a record in research and scholarship. Someone whose only critical and scholarly activity is in conferences will not be given much weight as a scholar: conference papers must get turned into full-length publishable papers (or at least be supplemented by these). Too high a ratio of conference paper to published essays is not desirable.

-Conferences can be expensive. Travel funds may not be available from the university or funding may be limited. (Always find about your funding in advance and if it is available, make sure it has been approved before committing your own funds. Find out about such things as limits on meal-allowances and the need for receipts.)

-Occasionally conferences have small subsidies for travel at their disposal, but that is increasingly rare. You will probably, however, get considerable discounts on accommodation associated with the conference.

Hierarchy of Conferences:

It can be hard to get papers accepted at some conferences, and quite easy at others. In terms of your C.V. that difference won’t matter a whole lot to committees looking at you as a job candidate—provided the conference (and your paper) otherwise looks serious. However, conferences that are perceived of as local or as graduate conferences aren’t usually taken very seriously by committees.

II. Conferences: How to Get a Paper Accepted

Finding announcements of conferences (also known as “conference calls” or “calls for papers”—the latter is frequently abbreviated as CFP) is easy. Consult the journals in your fields, especially the newsletter of your professional association. Join the e-mail discussion groups in your scholarly area. Consult various departments bulletin board. Go to web-sites such as The Voice of the Shuttle <http://vos.ucsb.edu> or see the handout about this service.

Most conferences will ask for you to submit an abstract (i.e., a short statement of what your proposed conference paper will be). Please observe the specified word-limit (typically between 150-500 words). Learn to be efficient in writing abstracts. Think of them as a miniature version of the paper you envision. Don’t waste words on statements like “What I propose to prove” or “This paper will argue.”

Some conferences will invite you to submit “detailed abstracts or completed papers.” Since most conference presentations are 20 minutes in length, a completed paper will run about 2500 words in length. (Time yourself: typically you’ll find that you read a formal essay at the rate of about 125 words/minute.) Never submit anything longer than 2500 words for consideration. A “detailed abstract” could be thought of as a short version of the final paper (say 1000 words or more).

E-mail submissions are generally acceptable, but check the CFP carefully and follow all guidelines.

III. Conferences: Guidelines for Paper-Giving:

-Write your paper well in advance. Pay no attention to friends who make jokes about how “You can write it on the plane.”  You can, but it won’t be good enough.

-Think about your probable audience when you write. Remember that the audience for most conference papers is a self-selected one: large conferences often have several parallel sessions going on at the same time, which means that no one will come to your session who isn’t already quite interested in at least one of the papers being given in your session. That doesn’t mean that every audience member will be familiar with your subject. (That can partly depend on how related the other two papers are to yours; you could presume common knowledge in your audience if, say, all three papers in your panel were on the same author.) Never write for yourself: put yourself in the place of possible audience members and allow for their interests and probable range of knowledge. Try to gracefully include any who may not be familiar with the details of the work you’re talking about. (As a more general matter, always remember, when writing or talking about a work, even for an informed audience of specialists, that you have undoubtedly read the work you’re discussing more recently than they have, and you may have also thought about it more intensely than they have—so reminding your audience of details, especially if you can do that without seeming too heavy-handed, is always appreciated.)

-Remember that oral presentations are harder for an audience to take in than written ones. Provide clear “signposts” so your listeners can pick up the structure and logic of your overall argument. A bit of overview at the beginning is always appreciated. And some statement that suggests when are coming to your conclusion is a good way of keeping listeners engaged at the end. Throughout the paper, avoid over-complex sentence structures that are hard for the ear to sort out (even though those might be fine for a written version of the same paper).

-Rehearse your paper—more than once, and at least once in front of someone. Rehearse your presentation until you feel comfortable and fluent with it.

-Time yourself. Make sure that the time it will take you for your presentation is within plus or minus two minutes of the time specified. Anything else—including saying that you’re skipping to the end to stay within your time limit—is unprofessional (though you will frequently see it done). Conference sessions are typically made up of three speakers, each allotted 20 minutes, with 20-30 minutes set aside for discussion at the end. If you run over in your presentation then you are taking time that does not belong to you. Timing is crucial in a job talk: NEVER go over your time—it will be seen as bad teaching, unprofessional lack of preparation, etc. In fact, at the start of your presentation, tell your audience what you have been asked by the hiring committee to do and for how long—then DO IT! That way, they have the same expectations you do concerning level of discourse, timing, content, etc.

-In our field, it’s quite ok to read your entire presentation, but look up often enough to give your auditors plenty of eye contact. It helps to think of the presentation as a kind of conversation that you’re having with your audience. Moderate your voice to signal the developments in your argument, the turning points, and the conclusions. Sometimes a pause for a brief off-the-cuff comment will help give your presentation vitality. (Make sure you have time for that.)

-Don’t feel anxious about the question period afterwards. The questions will almost never be attacking. Often they are asked simply because questioners want to show they have something to say on your topic. This is a complement to your ability to stimulate thought in your audience. Prepare a brief “filler” to add as people prepare questions—to avoid the awkward silence.

-Answer all questions as best you can. Remember, you can simply thank audience members for their observations or promise to think about their ideas when you work on your paper in the future.

Adapted from the Department of English Placement Office

Support Comparative Literature

• Give to the Linda Hutcheon Scholarship Fund
• Give to the Peter Franklin Memorial Scholarship Fund

Employment Opportunities

• Faculty Openings

Upcoming Events

• Future Events →

Latest News

• 93 Charles St. W., 3rd. fl, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1K9. • Tel: (416) 813-4041 Fax: (416) 813-4040

Conference Papers

What this handout is about.

This handout outlines strategies for writing and presenting papers for academic conferences.

What’s special about conference papers?

Conference papers can be an effective way to try out new ideas, introduce your work to colleagues, and hone your research questions. Presenting at a conference is a great opportunity for gaining valuable feedback from a community of scholars and for increasing your professional stature in your field.

A conference paper is often both a written document and an oral presentation. You may be asked to submit a copy of your paper to a commentator before you present at the conference. Thus, your paper should follow the conventions for academic papers and oral presentations.

Preparing to write your conference paper

There are several factors to consider as you get started on your conference paper.

Determine the structure and style

How will you structure your presentation? This is an important question, because your presentation format will shape your written document. Some possibilities for your session include:

• A visual presentation, including software such as PowerPoint or Prezi
• A paper that you read aloud
• A roundtable discussion

Presentations can be a combination of these styles. For example, you might read a paper aloud while displaying images. Following your paper, you might participate in an informal conversation with your fellow presenters.

You will also need to know how long your paper should be. Presentations are usually 15-20 minutes. A general rule of thumb is that one double-spaced page takes 2-2.5 minutes to read out loud. Thus an 8-10 page, double-spaced paper is often a good fit for a 15-20 minute presentation. Adhere to the time limit.  Make sure that your written paper conforms to the presentation constraints.

Consider the conventions of the conference and the structure of your session

It is important to meet the expectations of your conference audience. Have you been to an academic conference previously?  How were presentations structured? What kinds of presentations did you find most effective? What do you know about the particular conference you are planning to attend? Some professional organizations have their own rules and suggestions for writing and presenting for their conferences. Make sure to find out what they are and stick to them.

If you proposed a panel with other scholars, then you should already have a good idea of your panel’s expectations. However, if you submitted your paper individually and the conference organizers placed it on a panel with other papers, you will need additional information.

Will there be a commentator? Commentators, also called respondents or discussants, can be great additions to panels, since their job is to pull the papers together and pose questions. If there will be a commentator, be sure to know when they would like to have a copy of your paper. Observe this deadline.

You may also want to find out what your fellow presenters will be talking about. Will you circulate your papers among the other panelists prior to the conference? Will your papers address common themes? Will you discuss intersections with each other’s work after your individual presentations? How collaborative do you want your panel to be?

Analyze your audience

Knowing your audience is critical for any writing assignment, but conference papers are special because you will be physically interacting with them. Take a look at our handout on audience . Anticipating the needs of your listeners will help you write a conference paper that connects your specific research to their broader concerns in a compelling way.

What are the concerns of the conference?

You can identify these by revisiting the call for proposals and reviewing the mission statement or theme of the conference. What key words or concepts are repeated? How does your work relate to these larger research questions? If you choose to orient your paper toward one of these themes, make sure there is a genuine relationship. Superficial use of key terms can weaken your paper.

What are the primary concerns of the field?

How do you bridge the gap between your research and your field’s broader concerns? Finding these linkages is part of the brainstorming process. See our handout on brainstorming . If you are presenting at a conference that is within your primary field, you should be familiar with leading concerns and questions. If you will be attending an interdisciplinary conference or a conference outside of your field, or if you simply need to refresh your knowledge of what’s current in your discipline, you can:

• Read recently published journals and books, including recent publications by the conference’s featured speakers
• Talk to people who have been to the conference
• Pay attention to questions about theory and method. What questions come up in the literature? What foundational texts should you be familiar with?
• Review the initial research questions that inspired your project. Think about the big questions in the secondary literature of your field.
• Try a free-writing exercise. Imagine that you are explaining your project to someone who is in your department, but is unfamiliar with your specific topic. What can you assume they already know? Where will you need to start in your explanation? How will you establish common ground?

Contextualizing your narrow research question within larger trends in the field will help you connect with your audience.  You might be really excited about a previously unknown nineteenth-century poet. But will your topic engage others?  You don’t want people to leave your presentation, thinking, “What was the point of that?” By carefully analyzing your audience and considering the concerns of the conference and the field, you can present a paper that will have your listeners thinking, “Wow! Why haven’t I heard about that obscure poet before? She is really important for understanding developments in Romantic poetry in the 1800s!”

Writing your conference paper

I have a really great research paper/manuscript/dissertation chapter on this same topic. Should I cut and paste?

Be careful here. Time constraints and the needs of your audience may require a tightly focused and limited message. To create a paper tailored to the conference, you might want to set everything aside and create a brand new document.  Don’t worry—you will still have that paper, manuscript, or chapter if you need it. But you will also benefit from taking a fresh look at your research.

Citing sources

Since your conference paper will be part of an oral presentation, there are special considerations for citations. You should observe the conventions of your discipline with regard to including citations in your written paper. However, you will also need to incorporate verbal cues to set your evidence and quotations off from your text when presenting. For example, you can say: “As Nietzsche said, quote, ‘And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,’ end quote.” If you use multiple quotations in your paper, think about omitting the terms “quote” and “end quote,” as these can become repetitive. Instead, signal quotations through the inflection of your voice or with strategic pauses.

Organizing the paper

There are numerous ways to effectively organize your conference paper, but remember to have a focused message that fits the time constraints and meets the needs of your audience. You can begin by connecting your research to the audience’s concerns, then share a few examples/case studies from your research, and then, in conclusion, broaden the discussion back out to general issues in the field.

Don’t overwhelm or confuse your audience

You should limit the information that you present. Don’t attempt to summarize your entire dissertation in 10 pages. Instead, try selecting main points and provide examples to support those points. Alternatively, you might focus on one main idea or case study and use 2-4 examples to explain it.

Check for clarity in the text

One way to anticipate how your ideas will sound is to read your paper out loud. Reading out loud is an excellent proofreading technique and is a great way to check the clarity of your ideas; you are likely to hear problems that you didn’t notice in just scanning your draft.  Help listeners understand your ideas by making sure that subjects and verbs are clear and by avoiding unnecessarily complex sentences.

Include verbal cues in the text

Make liberal use of transitional phrases like however, therefore, and thus, as well as signpost words like first, next, etc.

If you have 5 main points, say so at the beginning and list those 5 ideas. Refer back to this structure frequently as you transition between sections (“Now, I will discuss my fourth point, the importance of plasma”).

Use a phrase like “I argue” to announce your thesis statement. Be sure that there is only one of these phrases—otherwise your audience will be confused about your central message.

Refer back to the structure, and signal moments where you are transitioning to a new topic: “I just talked about x, now I’m going to talk about y.”

I’ve written my conference paper, now what?

Now that you’ve drafted your conference paper, it’s time for the most important part—delivering it before an audience of scholars in your field!  Remember that writing the paper is only one half of what a conference paper entails. It is both a written text and a presentation.

With preparation, your presentation will be a success. Here are a few tips for an effective presentation. You can also see our handout on speeches .

Cues to yourself

Include helpful hints in your personal copy of the paper. You can remind yourself to pause, look up and make eye contact with your audience, or employ body language to enhance your message. If you are using a slideshow, you can indicate when to change slides. Increasing the font size to 14-16 pt. can make your paper easier to read.

Practice, practice, practice

When you practice, time yourself. Are you reading too fast? Are you enunciating clearly? Do you know how to pronounce all of the words in your paper? Record your talk and critically listen to yourself. Practice in front of friends and colleagues.

If you are using technology, familiarize yourself with it. Check and double-check your images. Remember, they are part of your presentation and should be proofread just like your paper.  Print a backup copy of your images and paper, and bring copies of your materials in multiple formats, just in case.  Be sure to check with the conference organizers about available technology.

Professionalism

The written text is only one aspect of the overall conference paper. The other is your presentation. This means that your audience will evaluate both your work and you! So remember to convey the appropriate level of professionalism.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Adler, Abby. 2010. “Talking the Talk: Tips on Giving a Successful Conference Presentation.” Psychological Science Agenda 24 (4).

Kerber, Linda K. 2008. “Conference Rules: How to Present a Scholarly Paper.” The Chronicle of Higher Education , March 21, 2008. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Conference-Rules-How-to/45734 .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

Presentation Tips

How to Manage Your Time During a Presentation

You’ve been offered a 60-minute timeslot to present to a group of stakeholders but have 90 minutes of content you want to cover — or worse yet, only 30 minutes. How do you make your message resonate with your audience while not feeling rushed or pressed for time? We offer our best tips for managing your time during a presentation while keeping your audience engaged and talking points heard.

Rehearse and then rehearse again

At a minimum, you should be practicing your presentation between five and 10 times. The goal is not to repeat the same dialogue word for word each time but rather find ways to say something differently or more succinctly each time. You’ll want to not only figure out how long each slide will take to cover, but also when and where to pivot if things don’t go as planned. Stick to the rule of thirds: Spend one-third of your time planning, one-third designing, and one-third rehearsing.

Be ready to cut it short

Life happens, especially when others are in control. Maybe participants are late getting back from a session break, the presenter before you runs long, or the inevitable technical issue happens. If you outline your presentation with key points and sub-points, you should be able to skip along more quickly by only covering the key points when short on time. What’s more, it’s better to engage your audience and encourage questions throughout than finish the presentation. By coming across as the expert in the room, you open the door to scheduling time at a later date with those who want to discuss points not covered during the allotted time.

Arrive early

The best way to avoid the unavoidable is to show up early to your designated location so setup doesn’t factor into your presentation time, and if it doesn’t take that long, give that time to the next presenter for their setup. Simply put, if you’re arriving or finishing on time, you’re running late. Plus, the added bonus of arriving early is you get to know your audience a little bit and find out what’s at the top of their mind. These are golden moments you can integrate into your presentation.

Be realistic

During rehearsal, you’ll quickly get a sense if your presentation is too long or too short. Be realistic about your personal speaking habits. Do you tend to speed up when you’re actually presenting? Do you pause a lot? Do you know if this audience loves to ask questions? Consider those real-world situations as you try to edit your deck. Some extra tips: Don’t linger on a slide for too long; make your point and move on to keep your energy high. Along the same lines, don’t try and cram everything you know into the presentation. Stick to your key points and anecdotes to make sure people are really absorbing the content. Think quality, not quantity.

Never count on a clock being in the room to manage your time in the moment of your presentation. Have your phone (silenced, of course) on the podium ready to glance at, appoint someone in the back of the room to give you cues when you are running out of time, or even discretely glance at your watch while taking a sip of water. Even though you’ve rehearsed enough to know how the time will pan out, taking an obvious break to check the time can be a big distraction.

What time constraints do you run into when making a presentation?

How Long Is a Conference Presentation?

Knowing the optimal length for a conference presentation can significantly impact audience engagement and the effectiveness of your message. When preparing for a conference, many participants grapple with the pivotal question: how long is a conference presentation?

The general expectation is a duration of 15-20 minutes. To translate this time into written content, consider the standard rule that a double-spaced page takes approximately 2-2.5 minutes to read aloud. 

Therefore, if you want to strike the right balance, aim for an 8-10 page, double-spaced paper. With this guideline, you can ensure your content aligns perfectly with the anticipated timeframe, maximizing clarity and engagement.

Conference Presentation – General Summary

Conference presentations are a cornerstone of academic and professional discourse, facilitating the exchange of groundbreaking ideas and research findings.

When attending a global conference , presentations are the primary method for scholars and professionals to share their findings. Typically lasting 15-20 minutes, these sessions offer concise insights into novel research or methodologies. Such a limited timeframe mandates presenters to be clear, engaging, and brief, ensuring that the audience grasps the essence of their topic.

Diverse in nature, conference presentations can range from keynote speeches by leading experts to interactive poster sessions. These formats cater to different audience sizes and engagement levels, but the goal remains consistent: to impart knowledge and spark discussions. Presenters can bolster their message with visuals and supportive materials, making it more memorable and influential.

One might wonder about the preparation that goes behind a successful presentation. It’s often a meticulous process of refining content, anticipating audience questions, and rehearsing delivery. A good rule of thumb for preparation is to align the written content’s length with the presentation’s duration, ensuring neither rush nor unnecessary elongation.

Why are Conference Presentations Important?

When preparing for a conference presentation , it’s essential to recognize the pivotal role these events play in both academic and industry sectors, raising knowledge dissemination and collaboration.

• Knowledge Sharing : Conference presentations offer a platform for experts to showcase their findings. Attendees gain insights, broadening their understanding of specific topics.
• Networking Opportunities : Presenters and attendees alike can build professional relationships. Such connections often lead to collaborations, partnerships, or future opportunities.
• Skill Enhancement : presentation preparation hones research, writing, and speaking skills. These competencies are valuable in various professional settings.
• Feedback Reception : Presenting allows for immediate feedback from peers and experts. This can help refine ideas or identify potential oversights in one’s work.
• Recognition and Visibility : Conferences provide a stage for researchers and professionals. A successful presentation can boost one’s reputation in their respective field.

How Long is a Conference Presentation?

managing the world of conference presentations requires understanding their typical duration and content expectations.

Presentations usually last between 15-20 minutes in the academic and professional landscape. This time frame is designed to allow for concise, effective communication while preventing information overload. Given this standard, presenters must strategically select and structure their content.

Considering content in terms of written length, an interesting guideline emerges. A double-spaced page typically requires about 2-2.5 minutes to read aloud. Hence, an 8-10 page document often aligns perfectly with the standard presentation duration.

Being aware of this time constraint prompts adequate preparation. By anticipating this length, presenters can ensure a well-paced delivery, maximizing engagement and comprehension from their audience.

Factors Affecting the Duration of a Conference Presentation

The dynamics of conference presentations vary, and several factors influence their duration.

Content Complexity

The intricacy of a topic can significantly influence presentation length. Complex subjects require more time to explain, ensuring audience comprehension. Conversely, straightforward cases might be summarized more swiftly.

Audience Familiarity

Understanding the background knowledge of the audience is crucial. If attendees are well-versed in a subject, the presenter can skip foundational concepts. However, diverse audiences might necessitate a more comprehensive approach.

Format of the Presentation

Different conference formats demand varied durations. Keynote addresses might be longer, offering in-depth insights. Workshop sessions or panels, on the other hand, may have multiple shorter presentations.

Time Allotment by Organizers

Organizers often provide specific time slots to maintain the event’s schedule. These predetermined durations can range from quick lightning talks to extended discussions, guiding the content’s depth and breadth.

Interactive Elements

Including Q&A sessions, discussions, or interactive activities can extend a presentation’s length. Such engagements enrich the learning experience but require additional time to facilitate.

Presenters can tailor their content by considering these factors for optimal audience engagement and effectiveness.

Different Types of Presentations in a Conference

Conferences offer a myriad of presentation formats, each tailored to specific communication and engagement objectives.

Keynote Addresses

Keynote speeches set the tone for the entire event. Renowned experts or leaders usually deliver these, sharing insights on overarching themes. Such presentations aim to inspire, motivate, or provide a comprehensive overview of the event’s central topic.

Oral Presentations

These are standard sessions where researchers or professionals present their findings. The format is formal, with slides often accompanying the talk. Attendees get insights into specific studies, projects, or innovations, making it a fundamental conference component.

Poster Sessions

Presenters display their work on large posters in a dedicated area. This format facilitates more personal interactions between the presenter and attendees. Participants can walk around, explore various signs, and engage in one-on-one or small group discussions.

Workshops are hands-on sessions focusing on skill-building or in-depth exploration of a topic. They often involve group activities, discussions, and practical tasks. This interactive format ensures attendees gain knowledge and practical experience or skills.

Panel Discussions

A group of experts discusses a specific topic or set of topics in front of an audience. The moderator facilitates the conversation, ensuring diverse viewpoints are covered. Audience members often have the opportunity to pose questions, making it a two-way communication platform.

Recognizing these distinct formats allows attendees to manage conferences effectively and presenters to choose the best approach for their content.

Bottom Lines

Managing the world of professional and academic events often leaves individuals pondering the ideal content delivery duration. Amidst this, the burning question arises: how long is a conference presentation? The answer rests within a general understanding that presentations typically span 15-20 minutes.

This time frame is no mere coincidence; it’s tailored to ensure clarity and maintain audience engagement. An 8-10 page double-spaced document often aligns perfectly with this, offering a balance between detail and brevity.

By adhering to this guideline, presenters can effectively share their insights, making a lasting impact while respecting the event’s time constraints.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Don’t miss our future updates! Get subscribed today!

Sign up for email updates and stay in the know about all things Conferences including price changes, early bird discounts, and the latest speakers added to the roster.

Meet and Network With International Delegates from Multidisciplinary Backgrounds.

Useful Links

Quick links, secure payment.

Copyright © Global Conference Alliance Inc 2018 – 2024. All Rights Reserved. Developed by Giant Marketers Inc .

Investor Relations

News Details

Johnson & johnson to host investor conference call on third-quarter results.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) will host a conference call for investors at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern Time) on Tuesday, October 15 th to review third-quarter results. Joaquin Duato, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Joseph J. Wolk, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Jessica Moore, Vice President, Investor Relations will host the call. The question and answer portion of the call will also include additional members of Johnson & Johnson’s executive team.

Investors and other interested parties can access the webcast/conference call in the following ways:

• The webcast and presentation material are accessible at Johnson & Johnson’s website www.investor.jnj.com . A replay of the webcast will be available approximately three hours after the conference call concludes.
• By telephone: for both “listen-only” participants and those financial analysts who wish to take part in the question-and-answer portion of the call, the telephone dial-in number in the U.S. is 877-869-3847. For participants outside the U.S., the dial-in number is 201-689-8261.
• A replay of the conference call will be available until approximately 12:00 a.m. on October 29 th . The replay dial-in number for U.S. participants is 877-660-6853. For participants outside the U.S., the replay dial-in number is 201-612-7415. The replay conference ID number for all callers is 13748405.
• The press release will be available at approximately 6:45 a.m. (Eastern Time) the morning of the conference call.
• Please refer to www.investor.jnj.com for a complete list of currently planned earnings webcast/conference calls. Please note the fourth-quarter date of Wednesday, January 22 nd , 2025.

About Johnson & Johnson

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com/ .

Media contact: [email protected] Investor contact: [email protected]

Multimedia Files:

Contact Investor Relations

Questions please contact us:.

Judges appear skeptical as Trump seeks new trial in E. Jean Carroll case

Trump attended oral arguments in his appeal of the 2023 E. Jean Carroll verdict.

NEW YORK -- With Donald Trump sitting in the courtroom, a federal appeals court in New York appeared skeptical Friday of the former president's push for a new civil trial in the 2023 defamation and assault case brought by the writer by E. Jean Carroll, telling the defense it would be "very hard" to overturn the jury's verdict.

Trump, seated alone in court, said nothing during the short proceeding but warmly greeted sketch artist Jane Rosenberg upon entering the room. He did not appear to make eye contact with Carroll, seated just feet away.

A jury last May found Trump should pay $5 million for defaming and sexually assaulting Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room, an outcome his attorney argued should not stand.

Judge Danny Chin cut Sauer short, saying, "It's very hard to overturn a jury verdict based on evidentiary rulings ... so why should we order a new trial here?"

Sauer reiterated his claim that there was "error in the admission" of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, on which Trump is heard boasting of grabbing women, as well as the testimony of two women who alleged Trump assaulted them decades ago, which he denies.

One of those women, Jessica Leeds, had testified that Trump grabbed her chest and ran his hand up her skirt as they sat side-by-side in first class on a New York City-bound flight in the 1970s. Sauer argued Friday that it was "manifestly erroneous" to have allowed the jury to hear the testimony because what Trump was accused of doing was not explicitly considered a crime at the time.

Roberta Kaplan, an attorney for Carroll, suggested some of the arguments raised by Sauer overcomplicated the matters before the appellate panel, framing a dispute about the relevance of sexual assault case law as "too many lawyers trying to screw in a lightbulb." She argued that the testimony showed Trump's alleged propensity to assault women.

"He had a pattern of, kind of, pleasant chatting with a woman and then out of nowhere he would, for lack of a better term, pounce," Kaplan said -- prompting Trump, sitting at the defense table, to shake his head "no."

At one point during the oral argument Judge Chin chided Sauer, who was racing through his presentation, telling the attorney, "You're speaking so fast. Why don't you slow down a little bit?"

"It's an important case and I'm passionate about it," Sauer replied.

Trump, following the hearing, ignored a shouted question from ABC News about whether he was satisfied with his lawyer's argument.

The former president's appearance in the courtroom, in front of a three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was voluntary, not mandatory.

The panel did not immediately issue a ruling. Judge Myron Perez said the case would be taken under advisement.

Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November 2022, alleged that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations "a Hoax and a lie" and saying, "This woman is not my type!" when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.

The former Elle magazine columnist added a charge of battery under a New York law that allowed adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he assaulted Carroll or defamed her.

"I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS," Trump posted to his Truth Social platform following the verdict last May. "THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE - A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!"

Trump is also appealing the outcome of a separate case by Carroll, related to the same allegations, in which a jury awarded her $83 million in damages.

Related Topics

• NEW YORK CITY
• DONALD TRUMP
• SEX ASSAULT
• STORMY DANIELS
• 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Top Stories

Durham sheriff calls out FOP's endorsement of Trump

• 3 minutes ago

NCDHHS to host webinar focused on suicide prevention

Exclusive: RPD's Jason Boreno talks youth gun violence

• 44 minutes ago

1 injured after shooting near NC State

• 30 minutes ago

Court battle over RFK Jr. leaves NC absentee ballots in limbo

Cary mom on edge following school manhunt, Georgia mass shooting

• 29 minutes ago

Limited staffing blamed for long wait times at DMV

Millbrook throttles Garner, 31-6; full list of HS scores here

• 企業・研究 機関の皆様

工学府機械システム工学専攻2年のZhang QingrongさんがInternational Conference on Precision Engineering and Sustainable Manufacturing (PRESM 2024)「Outstanding Presentation Award」を受賞

工学府機械システム工学専攻2年のZhang Qingrongさんが、2024年8月19日にInternational Conference on Precision Engineering and Sustainable Manufacturing (PRESM 2024)「Outstanding Presentation Award」を受賞しました。

「Outstanding Presentation Award」

Zhang Qingrong（ちゃん ちんろん）さん

工学府・博士後期課程 機械システム工学専攻2年

広東工業大学2022年6月修士課程修了

指導教員：工学研究院 先端機械システム部門 夏 恒 教授

「Analysis of Time Variation of the Experimentally Obtained Current

Waveforms to Identify the Equivalent Circuit Parameters in ECM」

●内　容：電解加工の精度向上のため、電解加工等価回路の分析がよく用いられています。しかし、電解加工で多くの気泡が発生し、材料の除去に伴い工作物表面の形状も変化するため、高価な測定装置を利用しても等価回路のパラメータの同定が困難です。本研究で提案した方法で、実測データを元に数値シミュレーションを行い、等価回路モデルにフィッティングさせてパラメータを同定することが電解加工に関する研究において、新規性と実用性が高いと評価されています。 

●受賞日：2024年8月19日

●参加学会等：International Conference on Precision Engineering and Sustainable Manufacturing (PRESM 2024)

https://2024.presm.org/ （大会ページ）

関連リンク（別ウィンドウで開きます）

•東京農工大学 工学部

•東京農工大学 工学府

•Zhang Qingrongさんを指導する夏恒教授　 研究者プロフィール 　　 研究室WEBサイト