# Presentation: 066627

## Giving Good Talks Isn’t as Hard as it Looks

- Juan Meza
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- http://www.nersc.gov/~meza

## What is a talk?

- A talk
- is really nothing more than a story

## Caveats

**This talk may not make you a gifted speaker**
**None of the rules that I give you are iron clad**
**You will need to modify these rules to suit your personal speaking style**

- Your mileage may vary!

## Some reasons for sharpening your communication skills

**Probably ****the**** ****single most important**** aspect in job hunting is your interview talk. The interview talk can make or break the interview**
**Giving talks is expected in many jobs and can be a critical factor in job success**
**If you’re heading into academia then you’ll be giving talks almost every day!**

## What types of talks are there?

**Job interview**
**Present a new result, e.g. at a conference**
**Status report for a project**
**Argue for/against something**

- Each of these talks will be different but the basic structure will be the same !

## There are three key elements

**What is your message?**
**Who’s the audience?**
**How are the pieces connected?**

## The Message

## What is your message ?

**Should be able to answer the question – What’s your point?**
**Should be short, 2-3 sentences at most and understandable at a high level**
**Short talks should have only one message**

## Everything in your talk should support your message

**Start with the message and work backwards in developing your talk**
**It’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of thinking that**
** ****____ is just too interesting to let the audience miss**
**If you’re not sure, ask yourself once again – What’s your point?**

## The Audience

## Who’s the audience ?

**Would you give a talk in Spanish to an English speaking audience?**
**Would you give a talk on QCD to kids in elementary school?**
**Would you give a talk on the wonders of optimization theory to engineers?**

## You need to tune the talk to the audience

**Need to be able to answer the question – Why should I care?**
**Find out the demographics of an audience and why they are there**
**Emphasize or de-emphasize parts of your argument**

## Putting it together

## How to structure your talk

**It’s not enough to lay out the key elements – you need to show how they fit together**
**Walk the audience through your key points**
**Most talks suffer from too much detail and not enough overview**

## Fitting the pieces together – Sample 30 minute talk

**Set the stage (5-10 minutes)**
**Tell the audience what the main issues are**
**Lay out your problem/issue**
**Describe why it’s important!**
**What happened (10-15 minutes)**
**How was the problem resolved**
**Only need the key ideas here**
**Don’t necessarily need chronological order**
**Summarize (5 minutes)**
**Questions?**

## Some Tips and Tricks

## Try to keep your points simple

**Use at most 3 points at any given time**
**Most people/societies/cultures have a hard time dealing with more than 3 things at one time**
**Remember that for a large part of your audience the material is new**

## Give specific examples wherever possible

**Examples can be used to clarify a given point**
**Examples can be used to create a big impact**
**Most audiences relate to visual examples better than to written examples**

## Model-based Safety Assessments Can Be Used to Simulate Accident Scenarios (Take 1)

**The goal is to determine the worst-case response in an accident**
**This problem is described by a coupled set of nonlinear partial differential equations that include Navier-Stokes, thermal, and structural dynamics equations**
**The simulation of coupled sub-systems requires new methods**
**The geometries and complex physics required make this a very difficult problem**

## Model-based Safety Assessments Can Be Used to Simulate Accident Scenarios (Take 2)

**Goal is to determine the worst-case response**
**Simulation of coupled sub-systems requires new methods**
**Complex physics and 3D geometries make this a difficult problem**

## Drug design is an energy minimization problem

**A single new drug may cost over $200 million to develop and the design process typically takes over 10 years**
**There can be thousands of parameters and constraints**
**There are thousands of local minima**

- HIV-1 Protease Complexed with Vertex drug VX-478

## Some essential elements that should be included in a seminar talk

**Why is this problem important?**
**Why should I care?**
**What was the outcome/product/....**
**Is there a tangible result?**
**What was ****your**** contribution?**
**Use words like, *****“This is my main result”***

## Handling questions

**Make sure you understand the question **
**Prepare for the obvious questions**
**Try to answer all questions, but some questions can/should be deferred**

- Don’t Panic !

## Top 10

**Have a clear message you want to deliver**
**Prepare for your audience**
**Tie the pieces together into a story**
**Only use material that supports your message **
**Avoid unnecessary details**
**Use (visual) examples to clarify your points**
**Outline the importance of your problem**
**Present your contribution**
**Prepare for questions**
**Practice**

## Some references

**J. Asher*****, Even a Geek Can Speak***
**N. Higham, *****Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences*****, SIAM.**
**T. Kolda, *****How to Give a Talk*****, ****	****http://csmr.ca.sandia.gov/~tgkolda/abstracts/giving-a-talk-snl-2001.html**
**G. Spence*****, How to Argue and Win Everytime***
**J. Wetherbe and B. Wetherbe, *****So, What’s Your Point?***

## The End