Instructions for paper presentation

The starting point

       You have written an IMPORTANT paper and it is in YOUR INTEREST to communicate it to the audience. The audience will consist of well-disposed colleagues who are there because they are interested in biographical approach and the title/abstract of your paper has aroused their interest. Most of them do not have English as their mother tongue. You will have about 15-20 minutes at your disposal, which includes questions posed to you (and this time limit WILL BE enforced). Your paper is normally 10-20 pages long and reading it in full is impossible (unless you read it VERY quickly).  What to do?
    What astonishes me in every conference I have attended since the early seventies (!), is that these simple and obvious propositions do not seem to be obvious to the majority of speakers, even highly experienced ones. Only very few of the participants consider them fully and act consequently.
 

   The typical problems are the following:

- you read the full paper, especially if your ability to speak english is not very good OR if you are a native speaker and speak in a local dialect (e.g. oxbridge) incomprehensible to the majority of the participants.
This problem was almost completely absent in Amsterdam
- you read a shorter version, but without once looking at the audience, losing their interest in about 30 seconds
We had a few readers, but they read in a manner which kept the the interest alive
- you have prepared to speak about 30 minutes and will lose your bearings completely when the chairman tells you after ten minutes that you have two minutes left.
This did not happen!
- you start your presentation from a much too general level so that you never get into the actual point of your paper until you are interrupted.
This was true in a few cases; it is extremely tempting to talk about the general questions ...
- you get immersed in pointless details (sampling procedure, methods etc) and never get your actual point across
This was not a problem
- in answering the questions (if you still have time left, which you probably do not have), your first answer will be so long-winding that you will be interrupted and the next speaker will be announced, even though there would have been several other questions
True in a very few cases
The list is endless. There are so many ways to make a mess of your presentation and only a few ways to make a memorable presentation!!!

In conclusion, our sessions went very well and I believe that these instructions had a beneficial effect!  Thanks to all speakers!!!

Here are some suggestions based on a long experience of listening to papers (or not being able to listen to them):

- think about the main points of your papers: what you really want to get across.  Take only a few if there are many!
- prepare a list of "talking points" but do NOT write a full text to be read to the audience (unless your English is REALLY bad, in which case you should speak French or German and give the text in English)
- rehearse the points so that you know you can present them in 10-12 minutes
- answer the questions (there will be a lot of them if you have managed to get your points across) concisely
- try to be in contact with your audience during your presentations. They are there because they want to hear you, not to eat you alive.
- distribute your paper to the participants after the presentation  (but of course if you are going to commit some or all the mistakes mentioned above, then it is better that the people have something to read during your speech)
 

- and send it to me (J.P.Roos@helsinki.fi) so that I can place it on the Research Network home page!!!

- note that you are expected to write a full paper, not just a 2-3 page presentation. This is what you have committed yourself to in sending your abstract!

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