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How to give a quals practice talk

Here's a collection of random tips for giving a successful practice talk, based on my experience giving and attending quals practice talks at the University of Washington. Following these tips won't guarantee that you have a good presentation, but they address some of the more common issues that come up in practice talks, especially for students just learning presentation skills.

Although some of this is specific to the UW CSE qualifying exam process, I hope that much of the advice is generally useful. I give thanks to the UW CSE department for teaching its students excellent presentation skills and having a student culture that encourages friends to help each other learn how to give great talks.

Organization and Content

• Think carefully about what information you want to get across. What are the most important two or three points in your talk? How can you explain them most clearly? A 30 minute talk isn't long enough to go into very many details. How does each slide support your main idea?
• What did you do and why should we care? Your talk should focus on these two questions. Tell us what you did in the first few slides (even if it's only at a high level; the details will follow) and why it's important. Be sure to distinguish between your contribution and prior/existing work.
• Aim for 20-25 slides for a 30-40 minute talk. Of course, this number will vary by speaker, but it's a good rule of thumb. Anything more than that, and you are almost guaranteed to run overtime.
• You don't have to tell us all the details. You can always refer the audience to your paper for the full details. If you're worried about it, have detailed slides on hand in case someone asks a question.
• Don't show code on your slides unless you have a very good reason. "This is how I implemented the Foo algorithm" is a bad reason. Instead consider demonstrating how the algorithm works on a specific example. "These code snippets show how you can do in 3 lines what used to require 100 lines of code" is a borderline acceptable reason, but only if that code reduction is one of the main contributions of your work. Flash the code up on the screen for a minute, then move on.
• Don't put too much text on your slides. Also, don't just read off your slides. If you can do this, you have too much text on your slides. A good rule of thumb is to use at least a 24pt font for the body text. I use 32pt.

Presentation

• Talk through your slides at least once before your practice talk. Stand in front of a mirror and talk to yourself. Or borrow a tape recorder and record yourself talking. You'll get a better feel for how you sound, and you'll notice interesting things such as the fact that you talk too fast or rely on hand gestures to get your point across. In addition, you'll find out how long your talk will run before inflicting it on the nice people attending your practice talk.
• Consider giving two practice talks. If this is your first time giving a talk about your research, expect to make a lot of revisions to your slides, especially after your first practice talk. Scheduling two practice talks also means having two time slots available for people who can't make one or the other. This may be overkill for some people; I gave two practice talks and was greatly helped by both, but good speakers won't find this necessary.
• Attend other practice quals talks, even if they're not directly in your field. Find out what other people do right and wrong, and think about how you could do better yourself. Think about how they structure their talks and question whether it would work for yours.
• Don't use two projectors unless you have a very good reason. It's worthwhile to examine your talk carefully and see if you can restructure it to only use one projector. A lot of times when you think you need both, you don't. Two projectors cause unnecessary overhead in switching between the two and causing people to focus on each one in turn.

Niceties

• Make copies of your slides as handouts. It's much easier to make notes on the handouts than to try to scribble notes on pieces of paper. If you use PowerPoint, print them 6-up (6 slides per page) and preferably duplex. Bring enough copies to go around.
• Number your slides. They're easier to reference by number as we start picking apart your presentation.

The Audience

• Select a mix of people who are and aren't familiar with your field. The people who are familiar with the grotty details of the algorithms/systems/techniques/theorems you're discussing will likely have detailed comments on the correctness of your work and will ask you probing questions. The people who aren't will make sure your talk is accessible to non-experts.
• Find out which of your fellow students give helpful comments at other people's practice talks. Invite them to yours. Bribes help.