Better Scientific Presentations

Here is great free source of public speaking! YouTube's Thnkr, let's call it meta-channel, is a source of valuable entertainment. In its own words   THNKR gives you extraordinary access to the people, stories, ideas that will change your mind. Among these extraordinary people and ideas,  public speaking through their Podium section.  The basic techniques and best practices of public speaking shown here extend to scientific presentations. This video on basic tips is a good place to get started. Enjoy!

In February 2011, I mentioned the film The King's Speech . Finally, yesterday I had the chance to see it. Here are three things I learned.   Two days ago the DVD of The King's Speech was released here in Germany. I got the 2-DVD edition yesterday and watched it. It is a good film and Colin Firth, who plays King George VI, together with Geoffrey Rush (The King's speech therapist) are superb. The film focuses on the unlikely friendship between these two characters rather than in the King's speech problem. Still, I think the film touches an important point: Communication is important, but without character is superfluous. Some historical background. George VI is the father of Queen Elizabeth II and brother of King Edward VIII. Their father, King George V, dies in early 1936 as the World War II is breaking. The elder son of King George V, David, becomes King Edward VIII but abdicates in less than a year in favor of a woman. His younger bother, Albert, becomes King Geor...

Inspired by a good book on public speaker, in this post I offer some advice on how to give a persuasive scientific talk. It turns out the ideal way of organizing a talk has been laid out by the Greeks. I used the updated version from Jay Heinrichs.  I recently read that the format of a modern talk came be traced all the way back to the Greeks, in particular to Cicero. According to him, a persuasive talk follows the sequential set of steps:  Invention  Arrangement Style Memory Delivery Memory seems to be odd nowadays, so I would update it to Rehearsal.  Let's start with Invention. Invention. An empty canvas or  page can be scary for fine art painters or writers, but what is worse is after the first stroke lands on the canvas or the first word on the page, a world of possibilities shrinks dramatically. After the second stoke or word there are no more possibilities, the path has been laid out.  This is no different in scientific talks, though here ...