Red line

From EESwiki

The red line of a talk

Before you even start: formulate your message

• Before you even start to work on any details of your talk (such as preparing slides), you should get very clear about the central message you want to get across. Note that this step may use up a major part of your preparation time. Before an important talk, I usually start to think about it up to two weeks in advance and make some notes whenever I have a new idea.

Here are some practical hints:

• Obviously, what you need two things even before you can formulate your message: know your topic (e.g. understand the text) and know your audience. Therefore: try to get this knowledge early on! If you are already under time pressure when you start to read your text you will hardly deliver a good talk.

The criteria for your message are:

1. It should express an important aspect of your text/work (or whatever the talk is based on).

2. It should be of interest for your audience (if a secondary aspect of your text is of primary interest to your audience, you may want to choose this one).

• Formulate your message really means: formulate it. Write it down on a piece of paper. It should not be more than a few lines. Especially in a longer talk, you may have several main points (often three). This is ok if these points are connected and build on each other in a coherent way.

• If you can formulate your message in terms of a picture, do so.

• In practise, there is often a sub-text that you want to get across with your presentation. Which is: I have understood it. I’m good and professional (or a variant). My advice is: Don’t spend too many thoughts on this point. You will get it for free. You can trust that if you get your central message right, you will also look professional.

When preparing the talk: Your message is the red line

A talk is not a novel, but a short story. This means, there needs to be one red line in your presentation. A single coherent narrative, not many tangled lines. And your message is your guideline for this story.

• Check every piece of information in your text on whether it is needed to get to your main point. If not, don’t use it in your talk.

• Similarly, when designing your slides, ask for every slide whether and how it helps you with the central message. The same applies for all the information on the slide.

• Already your introduction should point to the main message, for example in the form of a question that you formulate and where your message gives an answer in the end.

• The main part of your talk then unfolds your message (examples, methods and results needed for your conclusion, etc).

• The summary is the natural place to re-iterate your message in a concise way. If you can come up with a single picture that can stick in the brains of the audience this is optimal.