This is part 2 of a three part series.

Content is king. Nothing puts an audience off more quickly than if they think (rightly or wrongly) that they have been had. Content goes back to when you accepted the offer to speak, make sure that you have something important to say, and that you say it clearly, informatively, and with an eye to keeping your audience interested. Science is hard and it is harder to try to explain science, you are always on the edge of simplifying without watering down the complexities of what you are presenting. If you do this right, you start with a story that leads to larger concepts, which in turn, lead to some synthesis of those ideas. The coolest part of this is when this last step of synthesis happens in the minds of your audience.

Prepare yourself, be the expert, make it clear, know your material!

General Points

• Stay on topic; remember it is a scientific presentation. This is true for any presentation that you do. Once you have assembled all of your material, ask yourself if each of the slides belongs. If the slide is not DIRECTLY related to what you are presenting move it to the end of the presentation. This way you have it if someone asks, but you don’t present it during the normal presentation.
• Avoid “public service announcement” type language. We all know that some of these things are bad for us. This is a healthcare presentation. Stick to the facts that are relevant for that audience.
• This point is really related to the larger concept of knowing your audience. Don’t waste time on material that your audience already knows. There is to little time in life to have to listen to material that you have heard before. You know what you and your peers have already heard. Tell them a complete story, but don’t spend to much time on review.

Videos:

• I think the video is always tough choice. It can go either way, and I am often interested to see what the class’ response to the video might be.
• The rule of thumb for video use? Only if it is directly applicable to the topic.
• If you decide to use one, have it queued-up and ready to go. Check before your presentation that everything works (audio and video).
• Don’t use videos to take up presentation time. This is always painfully obvious.

Acronyms

• Use standard capitalization and punctuation.
• Instead of acronyms I would prefer that you use the full names of things with their acronyms in parentheses. Take the time to write acronyms out, that way we can all relearn them. When speaking, feel free to use the acronym.

You Are The Expert

• When giving a presentation, you are the expert, Do not:
• present a hypothesis as fact
• present opinion as fact
• You can present a hypothesis and you can state your opinion, but you MUST be very clear that you are now covering the hypothetical and opinion. People will believe what you say. You have the honor and the responsibility of being an expert.
• Whenever you refer to s study, let us know:
• Who did the study.
• Where was it done.
• Where was it published
• Has it been repeated?

Study Types

Classification of different study types (Röhrig et al, 2009) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2689572/

Names
•When describing complex names such as compounds, diseases, people, and places they should be practiced  known. You are teaching us, it is your responsibility to practice beforehand and teach us the most common pronunciation.

Figures
•If you are going to project a figure, you should check to make sure that the audience can read the material. Go to the room where you are presenting beforehand if possible and check. Use the best resolution figure possible.

Finally feel free to be a bit redundant (but only a bit) when closing your talk. COme back to your central thesis.

Prepare yourself, be the expert, make it clear, know your material!