The First Two Slides Are 80% of Your Talk
Summarized from https://www.brown.edu/Research/Shapiro/pdfs/applied_micro_slides.pdf
- Assume that your audience does not care about your topic. Spend the first 2 slides convincing them otherwise.
- Present the key findings and just enough of the methodology that the results don’t feel like magic.
- Use the talk to tell your story. If you talk had to fit in two slides, that’s what your first two sides are for. You can even adopt the “once upon a time” and “one day, as hero was going about their normal day…” tones in your talk.
How to Practice
- Write down your entire talk. Go through it over again until it is simple and there isn’t anything left that sounds clunky or that is too subtle to remember. This is especially useful if you have to give your talk multiple times.
- Practice frequently at first and then at longer and longer intervals between practices.
- Use a safe person for a dry run to clear the obvious land mines away.
Overcoming Fear
- Imagine that someone, a safe person to you, will be in the room with you at your talk. Visualize them being at the talk instead of all the other people who cause you anxiety.
- Remind yourself that once the time arrives for your presentation, you will think to yourself, “so this is the way it is”, and then the moment passes, and life goes on.
- Present your work as if it was done by someone else, not you. This will help you detach from your topic and remember that it is the work that is in front of the audience, not you or your weaknesses or anything personal about you.
- Practice the physiological sigh: double inhale through the nose and long exhale through the mouth, repeat for 20-30 seconds at least.
- Lateral eye movements have been shown to help manage anxiety via amygdala deactivation.
Data Science Principles 