Presenting ... job talks and more!

Agenda •Public speaking? Ugh. •Planning your talk •Composing your talk •Making visuals •Talk prep •Talk day •Last thoughts

Public speaking? Ugh.

Don’t like public speaking? Tough. •JOB TALKS. Job talks. JOB TALKS. •Academic libraries: standard part of interview •Public libraries: depends, but “book talks” common •K-12: not common, but teaching demos can happen •Don’t say nobody warned you. I just did! •Teaching and training •including training your work colleagues •including making screencasts and doing webinars •Conference presentations •Library events •Advocacy

Why am I talking to you about this? •I’ve been assigning presentations since I started teaching library school in 2007. •I have seen hundreds of student presentations. •WATCHING THEM IS DESTROYING MY SOUL. Seriously, it’s killing me! •I know you can do better than this. I want you to. •I’m reputed to be good at public speaking. •You can judge for yourself, but don’t use my class slides as evidence either way; I usually do better than this for public speaking. •See http://slideshare.net/cavlec and http://speakerdeck.com/dsalo

You can ignore this presentation if you... •Watch some TED Talks. •I know, I know. But TED doesn’t put ineffectual speakers on stage. •Find and watch an excruciatingly bad lecture capture on the same subject. •Compare and contrast. Think about: •how the TED talker captured and kept your attention, and how the lecturer lost it •type and quality of visuals used (on or off slides) •the speaker’s demeanor, movement, rate of speech (including pauses), types of sentences used and sentence length, rhetorical devices (humor, stories, etc) •what content they chose to include, and what they excluded (make lists!) •Use what you learn!

Planning your talk

All about the audience! •Just like web writing, usability/UX, information pedagogy... you must think about your audience. •Who are they? What do they know? What do they not know? •What do they WANT to know? What do they care about? What do they not give a flying flip about? •What actions should they take based on what you are telling them? How will you persuade them to take those actions? •This governs what you put in... AND what you leave out.

The “so what?” test •Imagine your audience saying “So what?” •Better have a clear answer for EVERY SINGLE WORD in your presentation! •“Because this is what I could find out” is a TERRIBLE so-what. Nobody likes infodumps! •This isn’t to say you have to spend talk time justifying what’s in your presentation (though that’s an idea to think about). But YOU need to know why it’s all there. •Common student mistake: I never want to see another “history of X” slide EVER AGAIN. •SO WHAT?! Seriously, so what? Who cares? Nobody cares. If they actually care they can look it up in three seconds flat anyway. •(On rare occasions, there is an answer to “so what?” with respect to something’s history, or history is a useful frame for the whole talk. If so, fine. But this is RARE.) •If you must: frame this as “Why X? What problem was X created to solve?”

Composing your talk

Housekeeping •Your audience does not know you yet. Put your name on your first slide, plus affiliation if you have one. •For a job talk, see if you can work your name unobtrusively into the header/footer of every slide. You want them to remember who you are! •Name and contact info on last (“thank you!”) slide •If your talk is URL-heavy, bookmark and tag the URLs and give the URL for the tag up-front.

READ MY LIPS: PROOFREAD. •I’ve seen people lose jobs over typos. Don’t let this happen to you! •Just as important in slides as résumés and cover letters. •Acronyms/abbreviations: make sure you have the capitalization correct. •And learn how it’s pronounced before you give the talk! (I’ve personally been bitten by this one.) •If this is not your strength, find a picky friend to beta-read. Or rely on images. •Bottom line: NO TYPOS.

READ MY LIPS: NO LIVE DEMOS. •No software demos. No website demos. No external video or audio. •Never. Not ever. Do not do this. Ever. •Let me count the reasons: •Software/website/multimedia doesn’t work. Or has changed. •Internet connection fails. Sound fails, or you have to play from your dinky laptop because room has no sound system. Video doesn’t play right. •You end up presenting from Somebody Else’s Computer. Nothing works. •Even if everything works perfectly, switching to/from your slides breaks the flow of your talk, leaving awkward silence. •Never. SERIOUSLY, NEVER EVER EVER.

Instead... •Software and websites: use screenshots •(more on this in Making Visuals section) •Video/audio: A still if you must/can, or a quote; otherwise, leave it out. •I’ve been known to play an apropos song as people come in for a talk, but if it hadn’t worked, I would have been fine; it was a dispensable extra, not crucial.

Please remember this! •Public speaking is an ORAL and (now) VISUAL form of communication. It is NOT inherently written! •Ever heard anybody read a conference paper aloud? Did you enjoy it? •Ever heard anybody read bullet points aloud, word for word? Did you enjoy it? •I didn’t think so. •Biggest mistake students make: writing an academic paper as a script, then reading it word-for-word. •This is DEADLY BORING. This is how hundreds of students kill my soul. •Nervous people who want the script in order to feel secure: you are sabotaging yourselves. There are better ways. I’ll talk about them later.

What’s another hallowed form of oral communication? •STORYTELLING. •If you can come up with a STORY for your talk, you have a fighting chance of keeping it interesting. •Or if there’s a story you can tell during it. •(Beware of Grampa Simpson syndrome, but otherwise, go to town!) •Whatever you’ve learned from books, movies, comics, and games about good stories? Use it.

Instead of writing a paper... •Brainstorm ideas, then weed (via “so what” test) and organize them when you run out of new ones. •Or come up with a single idea, image, slogan, example, or story to wrap your talk around. •Especially effective for short talks! Almost always memorable. •Or make an outline. Or bullet-point slides, even. •Ideally, you’ll toss the bullet-point slides later in the process, because bullet-point slides are awful. But if that’s the easiest way for you to outline, it’s fine. •I’ve done all of these, sometimes in combination. •I use Evernote to keep outlines, ideas, notes, URLs. I hunt CC-licensed images on Flickr.

Start and end strong •What do you think when someone •starts a talk with “Today I’m going to talk about...” •ends a talk with “So. Uh. That’s all I have. Uh. Um. Any questions?” •Right. I thought so. So you shouldn’t do this either. •Strictly script the beginning and the end of your talk. Memorize them. Practice them. •Beginning: Introduce yourself, offer thanks, topic (try for an attention-grabber here). Leave the outline out. •Job talks: the question should be the first post-title slide. You may skip it if your introducer remembers to offer it. If they forget, brownie points for you! •End: Wrapup, thanks, ask for questions/offer contact info. •Common failing in student presenters

Get the language right •Shorten your sentences. Shorter. Shorter yet. •Remember that TED talk and that bad lecture? Go listen to a few minutes of each. Compare sentence lengths, “complete sentences” vs. fragments/questions/etc. •A human cognitive characteristic to be aware of: we can retain more words and longer sentences when we read than when we listen. Allow for this! •Also, speakers run out of breath on long sentences and trail off into mumbling. •Cut out three-dollar words. •They invite you to stumble over them, and they’re hard to hear right and understand. •Colloquial, not academic, in tone •Some of my talks on Slideshare are scripted... but the scripts don’t read like academic papers! They read much closer to how I naturally talk. Read them. •Talk like a PERSON, not a PIECE OF PAPER.

Useful rhetorical devices •(I’m not using the three-dollar words for these. If you want them, look them up.) •Rhetorical questions •Repetition. Repetition. Repetition! •Many, many different kinds of repetition. They’re all valuable! •Exaggeration •Deliberate, ironic understatement •Imperatives

An example to watch •Michael Peter Edson, “Dark Matter” •https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyQdZlV8xY0 Look, no slides! •Reread what I’ve told you, then watch and tick off the things he does that I mentioned! •Speech speed, intonation patterns •Phrase/sentence length and variety •Gestures and other nonverbal communicators (e.g. laughter) •Talk structure and rhetorical techniques (central story, ending challenge) •Does he care about what he’s saying? Do you sound like you care, when you speak? •If you don’t, FIGURE OUT HOW TO. Why should I care if you don’t?

Making visuals

First things first: step AWAY from the bullet points. I know, I know; I haven’t. That’s partly because classes are a different genre from most presentations. It’s also because I’m an old hand who can overcome inherent bullet-point boringness.

Second things second: step AWAY from all the words. You want people to LISTEN to your talk, not read it and yawn at you.

Third things third: step AWAY from canned templates. Start with a total blank. What you end up with will look better. I promise.

Your visuals toolbox contains •Typography •Font choice •Font size (including variations) •Layout, angles, and alignment •Color (fore- and background) and opacity •Images (of various kinds) •Avoid clip art unless you really know what you’re doing. It’s tacky. •Be honest with yourself: how many of these do you actually play with?

•SANS-SERIF font (NOT serif, NOT Arial or Comic Sans) •There’s a current fad for sans-serifs, often in all-caps. Run with it. •Try font-weight, font-density contrasts •Using more than one font? Make sure they’re very different. •Color: contrast with background is key •This is especially important if you use photographs as background. Shadowing or a translucently-filled shape behind text can help. •Use text color as emphasis, instead of or in addition to bold/italics. Type basics

Good font, bad font • This is an okay, if overused, font. (Gill Sans) •This is also an okay font. (Optima Bold) •This font may work under certain circumstances. (Futura) • This is a bad font. It is ugly and boring and much- hated, also thin. (Arial) • This is a bad font. It is unprofessional and much- hated. (Comic Sans MS) • This is a bad font. It’s a spindly serif. (Baskerville)

Color •Contrast, contrast, contrast! •You can be bolder than you think. •Common mistakes •Red on black. Don’t. It’s illegible from a distance and in poor lighting conditions. (A dark orange may work instead.) •Green on red, red on green, orange on almost anything except white or black, fuchsia...

Screenshots •Make sure the text is big enough! •Websites: increase the font size at least three times (ctrl-+, usually) and narrow your browser window before you take the screenshot. •Show only the chunk of screen/page you need. (Slide programs have a “mask” function that lets you show only part of an image.) •Make the screenshot bigger on your slide. Trust me, people won’t notice the pixellation. •Show them what to look at. •Arrows, circles, boxes, in a color that will stand out •Expert tip: translucent layer dimming the whole shot; cut out pieces around what you want them to look at.

The image deck •Time-consuming to create, but oh so very effective! •A few words (max) per slide. Communicate all else with images. Or blank space! •Use public-domain or Creative-Commons- licensed images. •Credit all images: title, creator, URL, license. Small type on the slide is best. •These are terrible aides-memoires; if you post these online, include your script/notes.

On transitions •Leaving them out is a fine decision. •Make them fire automatically. •Click-to-start-transition needs a specific purpose. I use it, but I’m careful... and now and then I get too cute and it trips me up. •Unless you have a specific communicative purpose for them, keep them subtle. •My generic go-to is “Dissolve.” Simple, almost subliminal. •“Pop” sometimes helps with circles/arrows/boxes on screenshots. •Faux transition: copied/altered slides; new slides deopacify old information •Transitions can be fun stunts; no more than one or two stunts per presentation, please.

Some librarians who do good slides •(search engines are your friend! so is SlideShare) •Jessamyn West •Char Booth •Matthew Reidsma •Carly Strasser •not beautiful always, but certainly effective communicators •My class slides are TERRIBLE. Do not emulate them!

Best way to get good ideas: steal them! •This is what Slideshare and SpeakerDeck were invented for. •Go look at some decks! It’ll be fun, I promise.

Talk prep

On talk notes •Worst “solution:” reading off the screen •Almost as bad: 8.5x11 paper •It rustles, it gets out of order, it’s hard to manage. Don’t. •Better: presenter view. Check this out! •If you use this, arrive early to get it set up correctly. •Better: spiral-bound notecards •A 644 student taught me this one! •Better: memorization/extemporaneity, if you can do it. (It gets easier with experience.) •I go half and half. If you compare a talk video of me to my script, you’ll find that I go off-script pretty freely, but usually come back to it. Some talks I don’t bother scripting.

Learn your software •Be able to, quickly and without fumbling: •Start your deck from any slide •Stop and restart your deck at any slide •Stop your deck, go to a different slide, and start up again •Recover if the deck suddenly stops playing for some reason (fatfingering the Esc key happens...) •Fairly or not, your audience thinks less of you if you fumble with the software. •This is especially deadly in job talks. •Another common student mistake

Slide files •Have three copies: •One on your computer •One on a USB drive •One in the cloud •If you might end up using Somebody Else’s Computer, PDF your slides. •You’ll lose transitions... but you won’t lose fonts or break the layout, which is more important. •Cloud/HTML-based presentations scare me; if your Internet doesn’t work...

Practice. •OUT LOUD. Skip the mirror if you want. •If you don’t practice out loud, you miss too-long sentences, acronyms you don’t know how to pronounce, and timing/pacing problems. •If you’re not sure how well you use gestures, or how your natural stance comes across, do use the mirror. Or video. •Record yourself (including video) if you can. Yes, you sound weird. It’s okay. •Unless you sound singsongy. Then you have a problem to solve. •If your talk bores YOU? You have a serious problem to solve.

Talk day

Don’t worry about... •“um” •A few “um”s is WORLDS better than reading verbatim from slides/notes. •In all honesty, people do not notice this phenomenon unless they’re specifically listening for it. (Try that sometime.) •pauses (can actually help!), especially in the Q&A section •We’re info pros, not orators. Nobody expects Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Gestures •Go big or go home. •Little embarrassed hand-flaily things are what make speakers look odd. •Moving around? Using your whole arm? Your whole body? This can be really engaging! (Just don’t get in people’s space, and you’re fine.) •Otherwise, concentrate on standing/sitting straight and still; let your voice and your visuals carry the talk. •Laser pointers for emphasis okay, if they help you. •I’m a fan of Kensington USB presenter’s mice, personally. YMMV.

Do pay attention to... •Singsong intonation •Often worsened by too-long sentences. Shorten them! Shorten them! Shorten them! •“Uptalk” •Posture/stance: don’t slouch; stay balanced •Eye contact (find a friend!) •Smile! And breathe! •This also helps the nerves. •The goal is to look confident, intelligent, and collegial. •That said, I’ve personally known one EXTREMELY nervous presenter get the job, because despite her shakes, she bulled through and said intelligent and worthwhile things.

Calming nerves •Remember that the audience wants you to succeed and be worth hearing! •Many of us can physically trick our brains into feeling more confident. No lie! •Before you go on, stand/sit up straight. Lift your arms up and out to either side, stretching your upper arms and pulling your shoulderblades in. Let your arms fall slowly back to your sides. •In addition to tricking your brain, this also puts many people into a strong, straight, evenly-balanced posture that is perfect for speaking.

Last thoughts

Webinars •They’re here and not going away. •Not seeing audience reactions is frustrating! •Dial your enthusiasm up to 11. All you have is your voice! •They require some special prep. •If you are sending them a file to project, make it a PDF if you can. (Slides directly from PPT/Keynote can have fonts or layout MANGLED.) Screen-sharing may be a better option, if it’s available. •You probably can’t use presenter mode. Have notes. (Paper is OK here.) •If you can possibly practice with the webinar software beforehand, DO IT. They’re all different, and they all have quirks. Plus you need to know ASAP about any technical glitches or downloads you need. •Be on a reliable, fast connection! Home broadband is probably not that.

You do you. •While poor or inexperienced speakers tend to exhibit a lot of the same mistakes... •... good speakers come in lots of varieties and have many different strengths. •You have strengths. Play to them! •Design, humor, calm, “translation” of difficult concepts, great stories, a good voice, a friendly demeanor, a nice smile... could be anything! •Go back to those TED talks. Find some different speaking styles. (TED doesn’t have a huge range, but there is some variation.) •Speaker-you can be a construct, a role you play, if you need it to be. •(I do this. Speaker-me, even teacher-me, is a lot bigger and louder than regular-me.)

Summary of commonest mistakes •Ignoring the audience’s needs •“History of X” slide •Using an academic paper as a script •Too-long sentences, three-dollar words •Reading word-for-word •Weak, unscripted openings/closings •Boring, texty slides •Fumbling with software

Thanks! And good luck out there. This slide deck is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License.