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2011 NNIN REU Convocation
and Presentation Details
Dear
NNIN REU Students:
We
are only two weeks away from the convocation. I hope you have had a good
experience this summer. It is drawing to a close whether you are ready or not. The
NNIN REU team is looking forward to seeing you at Georgia Tech. It is always an
intense time, very busy, but is generally considered as one of the highpoints
of the summer experience.
Included
here is some advice about your presentation that has been developed over the
last few years. This is based on Lynn Rathbun’s observations and rants who
indicated that he is older than your grandfather, and has written hundreds of
presentations, and listened to hundreds of REU presentations. Please read and
follow these recommendations and you will have a very good presentation.
REU
coordinators, please review presentations with the following in mind:
First,
RELAX. Nobody is going to bite you. You would not tighten up if you were
sitting around with a group of friends trying to explain what you did for the
summer. That is all we are asking and everyone else is in the same boat as you
are. Go with the flow and enjoy your time in the spotlight.
You
only have 10 minutes TOTAL. Really only 8 minutes to talk. Use it wisely. 8
minutes means you should not have more than about 10 slides. Having too many
slides and rushing through just shows that you don't understand what you did
well enough to crystallize it. You should be able to explain what you did in 8
minutes but you have to stick to the general high points. You might think 8
minutes is short but it is plenty if you don’t go into a lot of detail. People
who are really interested will listen to a 15 minute talk if it is in their
field and they want to know details and critically review, but for an overview,
8 minutes is about all people want to hear about a topic at a general level.
Title slide.... You should have one, but you don't
need to read your title slide and introduce yourself. People can read this and
they will also have the list of talks in the convocation agenda. Also, the session chairperson will introduce
you. Just start....."Today, I am going to talk about the interaction of
aluminum films with silicon. This is important because..........."
Outlines.
<begin Lynn’s annual rant>I DONT WANT TO SEE ANY DARN
OUTLINES<end rant>. It’s only a 10 minute talk, not a thesis or a
mini-series. There are only so many times I can hear, "This is my outline,
first I will have an introduction , and then I will talk about my method and
then I will talk about my results, blah blah blah blah blah blah.blah
blah...." Just kill it and move on, or I will run screaming from the room
as will several other coordinators. And you will save 30 seconds. 89 talks, 89
audience members, 30 seconds each, just think we just saved about 5 hours.
Context and the Problem…You do need a
couple of slides to state "the problem" and "the context".
What is it that you are trying to learn, and why would anybody care? Briefly
state these. Don't start with the discovery of DNA or the invention of the
microprocessor! But if you are studying the interaction of Al and Cu metal
films with silicon, for example, state that they are used as metallizations in
integrated circuits and that unwanted interactions between films and the silicon
can cause failures, and so you are studying the use of TiN films as diffusion
barriers between the metallizations and silicon. There -- in one slide and 50
words, you have defined the problem and set the context. Now move on.
Jargon and Acronyms…. Don’t fall in
love with jargon and acronyms. In fact we challenge you to do an entire talk
without acronyms. We know you are proud of everything you learned, but your
audience knows about as much about your project as you did 11 weeks ago. Jargon
and acronyms just confuse the presentation – you don’t want your audience
wondering what PECVD is. If you can't explain it without jargon then you didn't
learn very much this summer. And if you use acronyms, you must define and
explain them FIRST.
Techniques…..
Explain what you measured and how you did this. You probably don't need
to explain how a scanning electron microscope (SEM) works or photolithography,
but other things that are particular to your project will need an explanation. However,
explain it simply -- not a whole
course. It is not so much how the technique works, but more about what it
measures ---- what is the basic physical principle that it works on. Just skip the details of the procedures and
methods.
Audience level…. Knowing your audience is important
for all talks. Your audience is your peers, but they are each experts in a very
narrow area of nanotechnology which is probably different than yours. They know
little to nothing about your project. You have to lead them through what you
did and why it is important without losing them in details. Pretend you are
trying to explain your project to your high school science teacher, in 8
minutes. In this sense, the talk at the convocation is VERY DIFFERENT than the talk you would give as a final report to
your research group!!!
Content…..
We want to hear what you accomplished, and why it is
interesting/important. That is not the same as a chronological, detailed travel
log of all the things you tried. Let the audience hear about what worked, not
the various side roads you took to get there. Research can be a series of
learning steps but we do not need to hear all the ones you took to complete the
project.
Summary. A concise and fact-filled summary is important.
The summary does not need to be long but should include the important finds
from your project.
Acknowledgements.
Keep them simple. This is not a place for humor. And please don't read
them, just ask for questions. The audience can read who you have thanked. Please remember to thank your PI and
mentor at the minimum.
Speak
to the audience, not the screen. You only need to glance at the screen a few times
for each slide to scan the bullet points, and then turn to the audience and
TALK NATURALLY. Lynn prefers that you use the laptop pointer and not a laser
pointer. Others disagree. Many use
the laser pointer and have it wildly scanning the audience and blinding them so
if you really want to use one, please point it only at the screen.
PLEASE,
when asked a question, RESTATE THE QUESTION SO ALL CAN HEAR!!
Graphs…..
Good Graphs are very important. A graph that can’t be read by the audience is
meaningless and a waste of time. Proper scales and labeling are critical. In
general, a graph that is appropriate for publication IS NOT appropriate for a slide. It is a simple matter of
trigonometry. Your slide is going to be projected to about a 12 foot diagonal
screen, and it has to be read from 75 feet away. That is equivalent to reading
your 15" diagonal computer screen when it is 8 feet away. So put your
slide on your laptop, sit 8 feet away from it. If you can not read the scales
and axes labels, THEN MAKE THEM BIGGER!! Do not make the slides overly complicated and remember to
indicate what the slide is about and/or what you want it to show.
Text
Slides…. Slides have to be readable. Bullet items should be nouns, adjectives, or
short phrases and NOT COMPLETE SENTENCES.
You should not read your slides. People can read for themselves. Bullet points are
talking points for memory joggers. They tell you what to talk about. You turn a
set of bullet points into sentences by filling in the details. Slides should
have no more than 6 or 7 major and sub bullet points. And no more than about
30-40 words on a slide. (If PowerPoint auto-shrinks the text to fit more on the
page -- you know you have too much.) Only level 1 and level 2 bullets should be
used. Do the same 8 foot away trick as you did for graphs. Never use ALL CAPS. If
you want to emphasize a particular bullet --- use bold.
Fonts.… Slides must be readable by the audience. Keep to a
standard, Helvetica and Arial (not Times Roman). Minimum font size should definitely
be no smaller than 20 point and preferably no smaller than 24 point. Stick to
basic sizes and a limited number of colors. Gaudy is not professional and also
causes the audience to look at the colors and not the data. Complex patterned
backgrounds for the slides should be avoided because they just make it hard to
read the materials on the slide.
Micrographs….
ALL MICROGRAPHS MUST HAVE A LEGIBLE SCALE BAR! Typically, the scale bar
put on by the SEM is not adequate as it is unreadable from 75 feet away. Use
Photoshop to put on a big bold scale marker. Saying it is 1000x is also
meaningless, since, when it is projected, it is certainly more than 1000x. That
is what scale bars are for. Also, tell what kind of a picture it is -- optical
micrograph, SEM, AFM, STM, TEM (all of which you will spell out). Provide some
type of reference -- is it top view? Side view? etc. If there is a certain
feature that you want to show, put
a big circle around it and point an arrow on it.
Brightness
and Contrast…. Micrographs need proper brightness and contrast.
There should be areas on each picture that are basically black, and basically
white, and areas all shades in between. If your picture varies only from sweat
pant grey to battleship grey, then you have not taken a very good picture.
Photoshop can help but not cure a bad picture. Similar issues occur for
brightness. Have your PI or mentor look at your micrographs and see if they are
publication worthy.
Line
Art and Illustrations. If you want a good presentation, spend some time
with an illustration program (Adobe illustrator, Canvas, etc) to make good line
art. PowerPoint is not an illustration program, and it is very limited. Pixel- based
programs, such as Photoshop, are not the right tool for this job either. Use
the right tool for the job. If you are showing a diagram of your “thing”, tell the
audience how they are looking at it. Is it top view? Side view? etc. You can
show multiple views or even 3D.
Just make sure the drawing is clearly labeled and easy to read. If you loose
the audience at the diagram of your “thing”, they will be lost for the whole presentation.
Animations.
Use animations sparingly. Animations of figures sometimes are useful,
but it really gets boring if you see 75 process flows animated with little red
and blue rectangles, showing resist going on, being developed, etched, etc.
Animations of text is useful for complex arguments but you probably will need
to do this for your talk. Please no
fancy flying text and or transitions -- just move to the next slide.
Pictures….
PowerPoint does a fairly good job with pictures. However keep these
points in mind:
1) Please don't stick a several
3 megapixel pictures into PowerPoint as you will end up with a 30 megabyte
file. PowerPoint
is only going to show about 300 pixels by 300 pixels, so use Photoshop to edit
the image first.
2) Be very careful if you
build it on a MAC. Don't insert tiff pictures on a MAC as it will use Quicktime
compression and
Windows PowerPoint does not support Quicktime decompression, even if you have
Quicktime installed. You will
end up with a blank box where your valuable picture is supposed to be. IF YOU BUILD IT ON A MAC, YOU MUST TEST IT ON A WINDOWS PC BEFORE YOU GET HERE !!!
Movies….. Embedding movies into PowerPoint is a fool’s
errand. It may work, it is supposed to work, but past experiences indicate that it actually
only works about 1/5 of the time. Don’t do it unless it is very important. If
it is important, be prepared to stay late on Wednesday night to try to get it
working before presentations begin on Thursday morning. It is very important to
have a back up plan.
Below are some links to presentations
about presentations, from a website at Cornell, video as well as PDF files of
slides. They have some good information, most of which does not contradict what
has been discussed above. Just remember, different talks for different
audiences. You can also look at
previous REU presentations on the NNIN website http://www.nnin.org/nnin_reu.html.
PONDERING
ABOUT PUBLIC SPEAKING
http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/CAPESBerggren3-2-05.pdf
http://www5.cnf.cornell.edu/CNS/QT/CAPES2-3-05.mp4
PUBIC
SPEAKING FOR SCIENTISTS
http://www.cnf.cornell.edu/nnin/capes/CAPES-V4-7.html
http://cnfx.cnf.cornell.edu/mediasite/viewer/NoPopupRedirector.aspx?peid=143b4e6b-045f-4a6b-b77d-af31adfc84dc&shouldResize=True
http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/CAPES04_Presentation_Skills.pdf
Have fun.
Looking forward to seeing you all!
Lynn
Dr. Lynn Rathbun
NNIN Program Manager
[email]
(607) 254-4872
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