Week 7 – Survival Skills

Note: Students in italics, Prof normal

Why do we go to conferences and introduce our research?

• To get feedback
• To market yourself: your presentation is like a business card, everyone will know you through your research
• It’s signalling: self-branding (see above point), shows you’re a good presenter (e.g. English-speaking skills), technical skills (e.g., PowerPoint skills)
• WHEN GIVING A TALK AT CONFERENCE OR ANOTHER SCHOOL, YOU ARE BECOMING A SALESMAN – think about what a good salesman does in his pitch

Gives intro to John Hopkins talk

• Graph for # of IT outage incidents isn’t the most convincing justification for the study (might want to control for the amount of air travel over those years)

Presentation Tips

• Don’t start presentation with “$XX-billion-dollar industry” – every industry is big, think of a way to sell a story (use examples that demonstrate the importance of the research)
• Don’t go directly to the theoretical literature review
• If you are selling a product (say a laptop), are you going to start with all the details of the product you are going to sell (e.g., screen resolution, battery life, etc.)? No.

In most conferences, you only have 10-20 minutes. The shorter the time, the more difficult it is to give the talk. How are you going to present your research in only 15 minutes?

• Cut down literature review, but then lit review, methods, results, discussion.

That sounds like a 20-minute talk. In a shorter amount of time focus on ideas, contribution, and motivation. Think about what is the most important aspect of your research (though literature review and methods are important, you don’t have time to introduce these aspects in only 12 minutes)?

• Don’t waste half of your time on robustness checks – might not be interesting for your audience, probably isn’t the key part of your research
• For example, 1/3 of the slide deck is on motivation of the research
• Includes a large number of pictures or graphs
• No more than three lines of text on a slide – the bigger point here, limit your amount of text. Don’t assume the audience will read the text on the slide
  • Remember that the audience can’t read and listen to you talk at the same time – if there is too much text on the slide, they will read that instead of listening to you
• Show results with figures and visualization
• Summary of findings is it

You are becoming a salesperson – focus on the important parts that will convenience your audience you are doing important research

• This even holds true in 90-minute job talk. Rule of thumb, you would probably only speak for 40 minutes (and 40 slides) which isn’t enough time to talk about your research details

I expected feedback on my research at conference talks, but I haven’t had much luck.

• I have experienced the same
• It’s really about introducing / marketing yourself and your research – you speak English well, you are an engaging speaker, etc.
• The chance of getting good feedback from a conference increases if it has discussants (e.g., WISE)
• Better to find a few audience members at breaks and ask directly for feedback (e.g., “Thank you for attending my talk. Do you have any feedback or thoughts?”)

Any questions about conferences?

I think it is understandable as faculty to tell stories about research, but PhD students have to demonstrate their skills (e.g. show models to show you have vigorous method skills). My advisor says to focus on the methods and show that I am well trained in those areas

• Think about having back up slides in your deck that have your full methods, tables, etc. Your presentation is all storytelling, pictures, etc. Then when you are done and taking questions, you can pull up your method slides from the back of your deck
• Think about it has having Appendix slides – you have all your details and tables in the back of the deck that you can pull up if questions come up about those areas of the research
• To your advisors point that technical aspect is most important part of the research, that is true to some extent. He is trying to sell you as a rigorous, well-trained person. If that’s the goal, that’s helpful advice.

In my experience, just listing out the robust checks on an Appendix slide is appropriate. Even for method, empirical papers, it can be enough

Different people, even at different conferences, have different tastes.