gnTEAM | Resources / Advice

Paper Advice

Presentation Advice

Start preparing your slides at least 2 weeks before the presentation
Ask yourself who's your primary audience
Assume you have to conquer your audience's interest
Use the rule 1 slide - 1 minute to approximately design your presentation (if you have to prepare a 20-minute presentation, generally 40 slides are too much)
Clarify as soon as possible the vocabulary and what the problem is
Use examples
Don't put a "outline slide" unless your outline is really different from the rest of flat computer science research outlines (Introduction, Background, Proposal, Results, Conclusion, Future work). You're wasting precious time.
Use large (I said large) font. This will stem the temptation of putting tons of text in your slides
Minimise the use of animations. Use overlays instead (they are much effective and clean).
Use always the same stylistic notations (font type, font size, bullets type)
Don't put too much text in the slides
"If you bore your audience in the first few minutes you may never get them back" by Simon-Peyton-Jones (Microsoft)
Don't read the slides
Don't use any piece of paper: you have to know exactly what you are saying without any assistance.
Don't stop every 3 minutes to drink
Use a consistent graphic style (every slide must use the same style)
Put the slide number on each slide (very important for questions [Eg. I want to ask a clarification about slide #34], or feedback from your research group [Eg. slide #34 sucks!])
Prepare backup slides after the last one. You can use those slides to deep some aspects of your presentation if you have time or if you receive questions
"Avoid the temptation to conceal problems you know about in your work" by Simon-Peython-Jones (Microsoft)
Train yourself until you are very very confident and follow the time requirements
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Poster Advice

Written advice on creating a academic poster: Link
Same advice as above, but condensed and in picture form: Link