🚀 go-pugleaf

In a continuing effort to make Usenix papers more worth listening to :-),
some thoughts for the presenter, especially the first-time presenter...
(These are my own opinions as a long-time attendee and sometime presenter,
and don't necessarily reflect the views of Usenix or anybody else.)

Run through your talk at least once in advance so you know how long it
will take.  It probably needs to be cut down.  My talks usually need to
be cut by at least a factor of two.  Doing this in advance is far superior
to improvising when you discover you only have five more minutes.

Say something interesting.  If you're short of time, pick one subtopic
and say something interesting about it, and forget the rest.  Few things
annoy an audience more than hearing "well, the rest of that's in the paper"
every two minutes.  Especially since it usually comes just as you were
starting to talk about something in enough detail to actually be worth
listening to.  If there isn't time to cover everything well, *don't try*.
(This is especially true if you find yourself *unexpectedly* short of
time.  Dashing through half a dozen topics in five minutes means you
can't say anything interesting about any of them.)

Say something your competitors would find fascinating.  If they wouldn't
find your talk interesting, the rest of the audience probably won't either.

Plan your slides for visual content.  Pictures should be worth a thousand
words.  If a slide doesn't make sense shown backwards, it has too many
words and not enough picture -- take it out.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry