How to Speak and Present your Ideas

A fantastic lesson by Patrick Winston

Recently, I watched this lecture on How to Speak, and I believe everyone should give it a try. It gives excellent advice on how to lecture and how to expose your ideas and gives you excellent advice on how to compose a presentation and a paper.

The main idea is that your Success will be determined by 3 things:

Ability to Speak
Ability to Write
Quality of your ideas

In that specific order. These topics are also a function of your Knowledge, Practice, and Talent, from the most important to the last.

Now, in what concerns Lectures:

How to Start?

Definitely NOT with a JOKE. And why? The audience is still getting used to your way of speaking and vocal parameters and they are not yet prepared for a joke. So how to start? With a Promise, an Empowerment Promise, something like: "By the end of this lecture you will be able to distinguish this from that, point out the different aspects of x, and will be able to solve y".

4 Samples

This is what should be on your mind during the lecture and it's built on 4 topics:

Cycle: cycle on the subject, repeat the subject as people were not intelligent because at any given moment 20% will be fogged out, so if you repeat it 3 times you guarantee that people will get it.
Fence It: Build a fence around your idea to not be confused with someone else's idea, something like: "My algorithm might resemble John's algorithm, but mine is linear and John's is exponential"
Verbal Pontuation: Provide some structure so people who are fogged out can be on board again, if you recap and enumerate things you will achieve this. If you have topics for the lectures and at any given time you say "Well we covered A, B, C and now we will go onto D" this will give people a sense of catching the boat again.
Question: ask a question some time to get your audience back, not too hard so you won't get any answers, and not too easy so people don't feel dumb. Also, wait 7s before you answer.

The Tools 🛠️

Time and Place

Best time? 11 a.m. - everyone is awake, people are still focused, they don't have that feeling of tiredness you get after lunch.

Now, for the space, there are 3 main things you should bear in mind:

Well lit: Low light signals to the bodies that is time to sleep and "But with dim light people will see the slides better" - Well guess what? If people are with their eyes closed how will they see the slides?.
Cased: Make sure the room is not too big for the audience size. A small, intimate setting can help keep the audience engaged.
Populated: You don't want to have a 200-place room filled with 50 people, they will start to wonder "What is so much more interesting that is happening right now for people not to be here?".

Board

Graphic: It provides you a graphic content.
Speed: the speed you write is the speed usually people get to grab ideas, so it's preferred for teaching.
Target: it happens that people that are new to talks don't know what to do with their hands and guess what: hiding them is just not polite. So it gives you something to do and point with your hands.

Props

People will remember more about the props like, for example, explaining a physical law and then demonstrating it.

The board and props are very good tools for teaching. Why? Due to an Empathetic Mirroring - people will feel they are the ones doing it. Remember that among students: Chalk beats PowerPoint.

The board is for teaching, the PowerPoint is targeted at exposing.

PowerPoints Basics Crimes

❌ Too many words, small font size, too many slides: don't shrink your letter size to put everything that you want in there. PowerPoint is a support, not your work, use simple text, font size 35–40, and don't clutter your slide. Not many images, no logos on every slide, just simple catchphrases and images. Remember: people only have a processor, either they listen to you, or they read your PowerPoint, there is no such thing as doing them at the same time.
❌ Don't Read your slides. People know how to read, this will annoy them. Instead of "This meeting could have been an email" you will get "This presentation could have been an email"
❌ Don't stand far away from your slides. Well, your presentation is not a tennis court, people don't want to split their attention between looking at you or your slides.
❌ Don't use pointers or laser points. You will need to be showing your back the entire time you point at something. You can simply put an arrow in your presentation, simpler and better.
❌ Too heavy. Print your presentation and put it on a table, do you look at it and feel there is some air in it? If don't, it's because has too much clutter, too many words and there is no time for a breeze and thought.
❌ Hapax Legomenon: A very cluttered slide to show the complexity of something, like a brainstorm. You can get away with this exactly once in your presentation and it's only to make a statement.

Informing 🎙️

Promise

Well, we covered this in the beginning. You should start with a promise and this promise should be filled by the end of the talk.

How to inspire

People get inspired most of the time by watching people who are passionate about what they are doing. Some examples are high schoolers who pursue some path because a passionate teacher in the field, and university students who go on to a PhD because they like the passion of some of their teachers.

Job Talks 💼

One of the most important topics and you get 5 min, after that you are hired or you don't make an impression that lasts.

Vision
- Problem
- Something new in your approach
Done something

Your talk should be guided by the following: Present the problem you are trying to solve, show the steps that are needed to solve the problem, you don't need to have solved them all, and then show your contributions. Something like:

So, the problem is understanding the nature of human intelligence, and the approach is asking the question of what makes us different from chimpanzees or Neanderthals. Is it merely a matter of quantity, or are we just a little bit smarter in a continuous way? Or do we have something fundamentally different that chimpanzees don't have or Neanderthals? The answer is Yes, we do have something different. We are symbolic creatures, and because of that, we can build symbolic descriptions of relations and events. We can string them together and make stories. And because we make stories, that is what makes us different. Now, to solve this problem, this is what needs to be done: We need to specify some behavior, and we need to enumerate the constraints that make it possible to deal with that behavior. We have to implement a system because we are engineers and don't believe we really understand something until we build it. We built such a system and are about to demonstrate that to you here today. Then Blah, blah, blah… Your contributions.

Getting Famous 📸

Why get famous? Well, you get used to being famous, you don't get used to being forgotten. You want your ideas to last; they are your child, and you won't want them to go to the world at their full potential, so learn how to expose them.

The Winston Star ⭐️

All ideas, papers, and thesis should have the following to be remembered or to have a lasting impression:

Symbol: a symbol that represents your thesis for example
Slogan: a catchy phrase that encapsulates your thesis
Surprise: something unexpected or impressive
Salient: an idea that sticks out, most theses have very good ideas, but you get confused with all that information, which one is it? Reinforce the one that sticks out
Story: How did you do it? How does it work? Why is it important?

How to Finish?

The last slide should be about you, you won't have a last impression, so:

❌ No Collaborators slide: this should be in the beginning.
❌ No Q&A: this would be tedious and stripe way your opportunity to have a last impression.
❌ No For details see: let's be honest, no one writes it down.
❌ The End: this speaks for itself, it's awful.
❌ Conclusions: Nobody cares and again stripes away your opportunity to have a last impression.
✅ Contributions: highlight your contributions, this will make a last impression.

Now, this would be your last slide so How do you end the talk?

❌ Don't thank the audience: this is a weak move and will look as if people were there only for respect.
✅ Salute the audience: something like "Well, it's been great fun being here. It's fascinating to see what you guys are doing here at MIT, I've been much stimulated by your questions and I look forward to coming back".