Title: Anatomy of a Presentation

1. Title: Anatomy of a Presentation Author(s): Jim Fluckey Affiliation(s) for all authors: Muscle Biology Laboratory Department of Health and Kinesiology Texas A&M University

2. Anatomy of a Presentation • Introduction • Presentations communicate specific details about topics of importance (to someone) • It is important to communicate rationale leading up to the talk. Background should be brief and succinct, and depending on the audience, not sound didactic. • The introductory slides should logically and progressively lead to purpose/hypotheses • Know your audience. Present to the level of the audience. It is not ‘cool’ to talk down to an audience or try to impress them with your vast knowledge. But be confident – do not assume that others in the room are experts on your data… • Limit the slides for the talk (typically 1 slide per minute is a good rule of thumb). Pacing is an extraordinarily effective tool for communication. Crisp, but not rushed!

3. Anatomy of a Presentation • Introduction • Limit ‘whistles and bells’, and when used, be consistent. • When presenting the work, refrain from using terms like ‘uh’ and ‘ok?’ as fillers for pauses in thought. Typically, silence is golden. • Know your timing, and do not go over. A good moderator may cut you off, and the mission to communicate your work has failed. • Presentations are a reflection on you, your training and your place of business. More is on your shoulders than your own pride (it took me awhile to figure that out!). • PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE! Even when you are the only one in the room who ‘knows’ your data, even the greatest data do not present themselves!! And not so great data need all the help they can get!

4. Anatomy of a Presentation • Purpose • Should be succinctly stated. Try not to clutter the slide with a lot of verbiage. • Typically, hypotheses do not add to this slide, unless necessary for clarity. • Secondary purposes may be added, but it is better for the audience if ‘points’ are maintained at a minimum. • DO NOT FAIL to COMMUNICATE!

5. Anatomy of a Presentation • Methodology • Be clear and communicative. Present only the methods that are pertinent to the data presented, but be replete with procedures so that the audience can formulate an informed opinion about the results. • Do not waste time with mundane methodologies, such as assay procedures UNLESS they are novel and/or controversial or critical to interpretations of results! • If multimedia formats can aid in the methods (or anywhere else), try to include them. In the ‘old days’ it was never a good practice to use multimedia presentations, but with PowerPoint and the ability to embed the video/pic, this taboo is no longer an issue.

6. Anatomy of a Presentation • Results • Present only data that are pertinent to the story… • It is preferable to use figures rather than tables, unless it is absolutely necessary to provide data in tables. When used, it may be a good practice to highlight numbers in tables that are pertinent to the story. • Be consistent with axes (if applicable), color codes and statistical symbols. • When using statistical symbols *, be certain to relate to the audience what these symbols mean, and how they were obtained. • * - denotes p<0.05, one-way ANOVA

7. Anatomy of a Presentation • Results • Pictures often speak louder than words, particularly with blot images, CT and MRI scans, EM, etc. etc. Be certain that when using data pictures, that the pics are representative of the outcomes. • If for some reason you present work from others in your talk, be sure to site the work on the slide and refer to ‘external’ data as ‘those’. Use terms like ‘these’ data to refer to the present study. • KNOW your study design. If data are cross-sectional, it is typically NOT appropriate to use terms like ‘increased’ or ‘decreased’, as opposed to ‘higher’ or ‘lower’. Use of the wrong terms may inappropriately lead one to wrongfully understand your study design.

8. Anatomy of a Presentation • Summary (or ‘Conclusions’ – a term which may not appeal to some crowds) • Formulate conclusions about your data. It is never good to overspeculate, but stay on point! • Bullets are an excellent way to summarize work, but they may not work in all cases. Refrain from too much verbiage, and it is not typically impressive to read your slides word for word while the audience reads along.

9. Anatomy of a Presentation • Acknowledgements • Some talks may not allow enough time to acknowledge verbally, but a ‘nice’ presenter will still find a way to put up an acknowledgement slide, even if it is only up during the question period. • Do not acknowledge co-authors. You already did that in the introductory slide.