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What is a presentation? Is it different,
for example, from a lecture about the same general topic? How about the difference between a presentation and a political
speech (that may win you an election or may start a war)? Are the "presentations" made by sales people what we
mean with this word? |
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Well - yes and no. Let's look how a scientific presentation relates to the examples
made. |
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First, a presentation is never the same as
a lecture. The latter is an inducement for you to learn something; it guides
you for work that you must do yourself.
There is no way that just listening to a lecture will do the job intended. The Professor, by the way, will typically not
give a damn about the expectations of his audience. He can't do that if he does what he (or she, of course) is supposed
to do. In other words: He has to consider the expectations of his colleagues, your future employers, the "Akkreditierungsanstalt"
and so on more than your, the students, expectations. |
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Nobody, however, expects the audience to a presentation to go home and start work on what they have heard; even if the audience did
not fall asleep. What you must expect, after people heard your presentation,
is that they go home and forget pretty much everything of what they have heard. If you want your audience to remember anything,
you must rub it in a way that is best suited to the audience you have. Big difference to a lecture! |
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Of course, there are similarities, too. A lecture or a presentation may only
induce you to go to sleep - but that just serves to show that there might be good and not so good lectures or presentations. |
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So be realistic. Ask anyone four weeks after they had listened to a presentation
of Mr. Scientist, what exactly they remember. The very best you can expect is: |
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- "Mr. Scientist gave a pretty good presentation, but I have to think for a minute about what exactly".
- "His point was, I believe, that you will not a get a good grade in the seminar if you don't apply yourself".
- "He looked kind of cute". (Don't forget, there is a growing number of female scientists and engineers).
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Far more often the reply will be:
- "What presentation?"
- "Oh, you mean the guy who kept mumbling to the blackboard?"
- "OK, now I remember. He was either for or against the Bachelor - Master system; I don't recall".,
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Quick! Recall any presentation
you heard in the last two years. Yes? Somethings coming up? Good! What do you remember? |
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See what I mean? |
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A presentation, once more, is not a lecture. It is also not a kind of (regular)
examination. The audience is not
trying to find out how much you know. |
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The (small and highly qualified) audience hasn't asked you: "Mr. Up There, would you
tell us - in detail - how to make a good sword?". The audience assumes that you
actually not only know what you are presenting, but that you know
a hell of a lot more about the subject than you will present in your talk. If all you know is exhausted after
you talked about 20 min - 30 min, your presentation will be lousy by definition. |
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In other words: a presentation is not primarily for your benefit; it's not for demonstrating
that you actually did some work in the lab. It's for giving your audience relevant information that it didn't have before. |
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However, there are also times when your presentation will be used to judge your
ability for some job / project: |
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Let's look at examples.
- Your presentation in a "Habilitationsverfahren" or a "Berufungsverfahren" (formal steps on the way
to a Professorship in Germany). It's not what you say, but how
you picked your topics and presented them. (If the slightest doubt will come up that you actually don't quite know your
topic, you're simply out).
- The presentation of your research results from your post-doc time at a big company that is considering to hire you (happened
to me thrice). The higher-up managers in the audience may take your presentation as one input parameter for judging you.
- Your presentation of your project to your Boss (and his buddies) at the company you work for. Your career in the company
may depend on that.
- Your product presentation at the big convention. If no orders come in, you are in trouble.
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OK - not all of the examples above involve scientific
presentation, but they all have one thing in common: If you don't get your message
(note the singular case!) across with positive associations from the recipient, you better had kept your mouth shut up. |
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So the long and short of this is: |
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- In any presentation you are always trying to "sell" a message to the audience.
- The best you can do is to get one main message across, and, if you are really good,
a few more vague associations going along with the message.
- If anyone remembers your message after a few weeks, he or she will also have some vague memories of how
well you did this.
- The science part in all of this is actually only
that your message must be based on facts and that it must meet some simple rules of
ethical scientific behavior.
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Let's look at an example for this:
- "I believe that solar energy will supply 12 % of the electrical power in Germany by 2012" is
a clear message, but not science. Who cares about your believes?
- "After having analyzed various trends and facts, as pointed out in detail before, I predict that solar energy will
supply 12 % of the electrical power in Germany by 2012" is a scientifically correct message, but not
ethically acceptable behavior, because, as you know and your audience already suspects, you didn't do the work but just
purloined
the data of some other researchers.
- "After having considered the trends and facts found in .....(give the reference), and juxtaposed them with the
completely different point of view as found in numerous publications of the American government and the coal industry, I
do follow the prediction that solar energy will supply 12 % of the electrical power in Germany by 2012. Now
you're talking science and you do it ethically!
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Is there a difference, after all, between a scientific presentation and a sales
talk? |
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Well - yes. The difference is that you are
a scientist and not a salesman. You want to get your message across, and for that you may use any (ethical) trick known
to mankind and salesmen, but you don't give a damn about what the audience does with your message. You give them your results and findings, perhaps together with your interpretation.
This being science, they don't have to "buy" it. They can try to find flaws in your reasoning (and if they do
you humbly admit defeat), or go to the lab and do their own experiments with results that may or may not agree with yours. |
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Scientific fights may start (more often than you would believe), lasting for
years. You can fight back, you can resign, you can change your field, but you never try to convince your opponents with
wrong arguments (note that I'm not saying in so many words that this is what salesmen
do), because you know that in the end the truth will always win - it's science, man! |
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It was already mentioned above: there might be times when you are giving a presentation
without knowing it. |
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The maybe most important example for a hidden presentation is when your Boss asks
you to give him a quick run down about what you are doing. Or maybe he asked you to look into something and present the
results in a quick meeting to him and a few others in his office. |
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Note that he did not ask you to give a presentation in the formal weekly department
meeting. |
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Whatever. Your Boss may or may not have second thoughts about this (like testing
you a little), but the way you present whatever you presenting his office or wherever, will influence the way he sees your
future. |
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How do you deal with such a situation? Easy - consider your (one-person) audience. What does your Boss expect from you? How does he like it delivered? |
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Don't try a formal presentation, handing over nicely collated papers, with a Boss of whom
you know that you will never ever been allowed to finish a sentence. Don't start some impromptu improvisation based on some
scribbling on the backside of surplus print-outs with a Boss who never interrupts and takes his (or her) time to think about
what you said before he talks. And so on. |
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Think about it. You may not become a scientist, a politician, or whatever requires
you to give presentations - but you will not escape some kind of situation as outlined above if you want to get ahead a
bit in whatever career you have in mind. |
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© H. Föll (Matwis Seminar)
