Read the entire
paper at least 3 times-You need to be able to explain the details in the
paper (even the ugly tricky notation)
You need to be able to provide a critical analysis of the paper
Check out references in the related work section of the paper. (this will help
you put the paper in context of a larger body of work and will help you
critique the paper's results/contributions)
Find the
important ideas-
A paper has many details but only one or two main ideas; structure your talk
around these main ideas.
Create a Talk
Outline-
Your talk should be organized in a top-down manner.
You should have the following main sections in your talk:
·
Introduction,
The Big Picture: what, why, how, and why we should care (motivation). Be sure
to include:
·
a
statement of the problem being solved (what)
·
motivation
and putting the work in context (why and why should we care)
·
a
high-level view of the author's solution (how)
·
Details
of solution
·
Results
demonstrating/proving their solution
·
Critic
of Work (possibly compare to related work)
·
Conclusions
& Future Directions for this work
The talk should be organized as the important ideas first, the details second,
conclusions last. Each section of your talk should be organized in a similar
manor: high-level important points first, details second, summarize high-level
points last. If the paper is well written, you can use the paper's organization
as a guide.
B.
Design your slides
Slide
Organization- Your
slides should be organized like an outline--a few main points, with sub points
under each one.
Your slides are a guide for your talk not a word-for-word copy of your talk.
List specific points that you want to talk about as sub-topics of each main
topic. If there are particular details that you want to discuss, outline them
on the slide and keep written notes for you to refer to in your talk rather
than writing all the details on the slide.
Summarize Main
Points- You
should have a summary slide of the main ideas at the end.
If applicable, Include a list of open questions from the paper
It is okay to
waste space- Add
just enough prose prose to present the main points and highlight the main parts
of each point. Use phrases rather than complete sentences and use large fonts.
You can use acronyms and abbreviations sparingly, however you should say the
complete name when you talk about about them. For example, if you abbreviate
processes to procs on a slide, say "processes" when you talk about
the point not "procs". Similarly, if your create an acronym for your
super fast multi-cast implementation SFMC and refer to the old slow multi-cast
implementation as OSMC, then say "our super fast multi-cast" and
"the old slow multi-cast" rather than "SFMC" and
"OSMC". The exception is for well-known acronyms such as PVM, MPI,
API, JVM, etc.
A picture is
worth a thousand words- Use figures and graphs to explain implementation and
results. It is very hard to describe a system implementation without having a
picture of the components of the system. I once attended a talk about Intel's
I64 architecture where the speaker tried to discuss the details of the layout
of the chip and the interactions between the components without having any
figures. It made for a very bad talk and a very hostile audience.
Number of
Slides- As
a general rule, it should take 2-3 minutes to talk through the material on one
slide, so for a 45 minute talk you should have about 20 slides. If there is too
much material in a paper to present completely in 45 minutes, then pick one
part (the most interesting/important part) that you will discuss in detail, and
present the other parts at a higher level. You can create back-up slides for
specific details that you don't plan to talk about, but may get questions
about.
C.
Preparing your presentation
Provide a talk
road-map- Tell
audience where you are going with your talk.
·
Give
audience a road-map of your talk at the beginning by using outline slides
Immediately after the title slide, put up an outline slide and tell the
audience the main organization of your talk. Another alternative is to first
have a few slides motivating the paper's general topic, then put up an outline
slide giving the audience a road-map of your talk.
·
It
should be clear when you start a new high-level part of your talk
Use good transitions from one slide to the next, and from one main topic to the
next..."We just talked about the implementation of foo now we will look at
how well foo performs for synthetic and real workloads.
You may want to use the outline slide at other points in your talk to provide a
visual transition between parts.
Repeat Your
Point-
There is a rule that says you have to tell your audience something three times
before the really hear it:
Tell them what
you are going to say.
Say it.
Summarize what
you said.
This
is particularly important for figures and graphs. For example:
This graph show
how the A algorithm performs better than the B and C algorithms as the number
of nodes increase
The X axis is
number of nodes, the Y axis is execution time in seconds The red curve shows
the execution time of A as the number of nodes increases The blue curve shows
...
Thus you can see
that as the number of nodes increases above N, the A algorithm performs better.
This is because of increased message traffic in algorithms B and C as shown on
the next slide...
Explain concepts
in your own words It
is certainly okay to lift key phrases from the paper to use in your talk.
However, you should also try to summarize the main ideas of the paper in your
own words.
Talk to the
Audience Don't
read your slide off the screen, nor directly off the projector. It is okay to
stop for a second and refer to your notes if you need to.
Practice Give a practice
run-through of your talk. Stand in a room for 1 hour and talk through all your
slides (out loud). This should be a timed dress rehearsal (don't stop and fix
slides as you go). Members of your reading group should provide a practice
audience for you.
Nervousness: How
to fight back
·
A
well organized, practiced talk will almost always go well. If you draw a blank,
then looking at your slides will help you get back on track.
·
Taking
a deep breath will clam you down. One trick is to try to remember to take a
deep breath between each slide.
·
Slow
down. Take a few seconds to think about a question that is being asked before
you answer it. It is okay to pause for a few seconds between points and between
slides; a second or two of silence between points is noticeable only to you,
but if you are talking a mile a minute everyone will notice.
·
Bring
notes. if you are afraid that you will forget a point or will forget your
elegant transition between slides 11 and 12, write these down on a piece of
paper and bring it with you. However, you don't want to have a verbatim copy of
your talk, instead write down key phrases that you want to remember to say.
·
Give
at least one practice talk to an audience.
·
Be
prepared to answer questions. You don't have to know the answer to every
question, however you should be prepared to answer questions and able to answer
most questions about the paper. Before you give the talk, think about what
questions you are likely to get, and how you would answer them. You may want to
have back-up slides ready for answering certain questions.
·
It
is okay to say "I don't know" or better yet "gee, I hadn't
thought about that, but one possible approach would be to..." or to refer
to your notes to answer questions.
