The Art of Public Speaking for Scientists

Jun 28

Hello science friend! If you’re here, you’re probably looking for advice on how to best write and deliver your talk at an upcoming conference. In this blog I won’t go into some of the most basic tips that you can already find on the internet and might have heard a million times before. I want to give you a slightly different perspective than the cold, methodical one with which most scientists write their talks.

There will be practical tips in this piece, but also elements of reflection. Because everyone is different, because every piece of science has its peculiarities, not every talk can follow the same simple recipe. By the end of this read I want you to be able to ask yourself the right questions so you can make each presentation you create the perfect fit for what you want to say.

Why bring “art” into science?

The title of this blog is “The Art of Public Speaking for Scientists” — this isn’t just a clever turn of phrase for the clicks. As scientists we often have a way of dismissing art and the humanities; all these “fluffy”, subjective, fields have no place in science… or do they?

Art is about communicating or evoking feelings. It’s about human connection.

This is particularly relevant to science talks, yes even the ones at conferences, not just outreach. In a seminar, your primary goal is not to communicate as much information as possible in the time allocated. Your main goal is to make sure your audience remembers a couple of carefully chosen key points (we’ll get back to that later), and comes out of your talk feeling curious and excited about your work.

You may have the coolest result in the world, but if you sound bored telling people about it or overwhelm them with a sea of information — drowning the main result in the process — they won’t even notice!

So how do you write a great talk and how do you make sure you do it justice when you present it to your audience?

Writing the content

Don’t write a mini version of your paper

When you first learn to write talks you’ll be tempted (and sometimes advised) to have the following sections: Introduction -> Methods/Observations -> Results -> Conclusion. It follows the natural order of a paper, and at first glance it makes sense. The problem is that if you go into writing your talk with the mindset of writing an abridged version of your paper you might lose sight of what really matters, especially if your paper is a big piece (a lot of publications are getting terrifyingly large these days - good luck condensing 35 pages in 10 minutes): your talk might end up looking more like an info dump. I’m not saying you will never follow the structure above, I’m just warning you against having this as your starting point.

So where should you start?

Identify the key messages

The first thing you need to do before you make any slides at all is identify roughly 1 to 3 key points that you want your talk to highlight. This might be the main result of your paper, this could include questions that you are trying to answer or that arose from your work. These messages will depend as much on your audience as they do on your science.

If you are talking at a very general conference like a symposium, one of the main messages you need to convey is why you are doing what you are doing - if you are quite specialised it might not be clear to the audience.

If you are talking at a specialist conference, it might be a good place to highlight some of the interesting questions that have come out of your work — this will spark discussion, allow you to tap the knowledge available in your community and maybe lead you to make some valuable connections.

Once you have identified the main messages you want to convey, you can build your talk around them.

—Example: Drawing out the structure of a new talk

Context: I am writing a 10 minute talk on a super luminous supernova for an audience of physicists.

The old fashioned way (It’s okay but not very effective)

Introduction: How massive stars explode as supernovae and what a super luminous supernova is

Methods and observations: Binary models and data of SN 2017gci.

Results: Describe the two binary pathways to SN 2017gci that I found.

Let’s make this better! — First what messages do I want to highlight?

Why is this supernova important? -> It’s one in a category of explosions we don’t understand the origins of very well.
Why is my work important? -> Because I can find a progenitor star for SN 2017gci in a simulation that is consistent with loads of other observed quantities in the Universe - that’s novel.
Why was the result surprising? -> The binary interaction wasn’t where I expected it to be!

Now how do I lay this information out in a coherent and engaging story?

I can start by telling them how this work came about: I saw the SN 2017gci paper on the arxiv and it peaked my interest (this makes it personable). As I tell them why, I get to explain why it’s important. Message number 1 - * tick *.
I will also tell them what I expected to find. That is foreshadowing for Message number 3 ;)
Then I will walk them through how I set up to find the progenitor model in our simulations. As I do this I can tell them how our models are different from other people’s: self-consistent across a large number of astronomical observations. Message number 2 - * tick *.
Then I can show them my results and reveal that it’s not at all what I expected — it’s really cool! Doing it this way really emulates the true feeling of surprise that and expert with knowledge of the literature would have finding this. It makes them a lot more likely to understand and remember why this result matters. Point number 3 - * tick *!

You could argue this follows a sort of Introduction -> methods -> results structure — it naturally will, but by letting go of those headings you set yourself up for writing something more engaging than a short oral version of your pre-print and really telling a story.

***

If you want more tips on how to make better slides, scroll to the last section of this blog — if I missed anything you think is important, leave a comment. For now let’s say you’ve got your presentation ready: what now?

It’s all in the delivery

I have bad news: Your delivery is as important as your content (more so, actually) when it comes to keeping your audience engaged. So we need to use our voice and our body language to do justice to our amazing science and beautiful slides.

The voice

Speak with your chest voice: Especially if you are not mic-ed up, you want to make sure that everyone can hear you, even the slackers at the back finishing their slides for their talk in the afternoon session. They should have been better prepared, make sure they can’t ignore you. Even on zoom this is important: Being a little louder than your normal speaking voice adds weight to your words and makes the audience want to listen to you. You don’t even notice it but every podcast presenter and radio presenter (unless it’s the 4am classical radio host) speaks quite loudly in their microphone.
This can be particularly difficult for people who typically don’t use their chest voice — as a self-proclaimed loud-ass bitch I don’t have that problem — so you might want to practice speaking “conference loud” in your prep time.
Enthusiasm: I see a lot of talks at conferences where the people giving them sound bored by their own work. Isn’t your stuff really awesome and cool? Act like it! But I get it… You’re nervous and all you can think about is “what if the slides don’t work and the guy at the front with the frowny face asks me a really tough question”, I know, I’ve been there. Before you get on stage, remind yourself of all the stuff you find cool and weird and interesting about your work — setting yourself up for greatness is reminding yourself of the feelings that make you a scientist: your curiosity and excitement.
Intonations and pace: One of the advice I hear a lot is that speaking slowly is very important. I am going to disagree. Obviously if you speak so fast it’s unintelligible then your audience probably won’t get much of your talk - but you can speak slowly and lose them all after 2 minutes, or speak quickly and keep them listening till the lunch break.
So what’s the key? Variations in intonation and pace. Think of intonations (emphasising parts of sentences or words) and pacing (going faster or slower over certain parts) like the oral version of bold text. They help you tell your audience “this piece of information is important”. You’ll want to practice this before the big day — you need to be more animated than you think. This is borderline theatre (there come the arts again) and can feel awkward at first but practice makes perfect!

The body language

Take space and own the room: Be the centre of attention. You are the spokes person for your science and you deserve to be heard. Make yourself big, make yourself seen.
Your posture is an essential part of that, not just for taking space but for your confidence. Stand (or sit) tall, shoulders back, chest forward — and to anyone who has boobs, I know the world has told us our titties are not the be seen, f*ck that. Imagine there is a torch in place of your nipples and that you are shining it at your audience (that’s official roller derby advice for keeping you chest up).
Move around the stage, own the space. If you’re pointing at something, don’t sheepishly raise half your arm — take a full step forward, extend your arm, point a finger or your full hand. Let your whole body carry your message.
Eye contact is important too — and it can be faked. I never actually look people of the audience in the eye, I prefer talking to a whole row or side of the room. Switching up between talking to the front row and the back row is a great way to show that you own that room and tell people: you need to be paying attention to this.
Gestures: If intonations are the verbal version of a bold font, gestures are the oral version of a picture. As a French person, my speech relies on gestures quite heavily and I know some cultures are quite subdued about it. I would encourage you to step out of your comfort zone and try to use gestures more. When used effectively they can illustrate your words or help emphasise specific points.

Practice Practice Practice

Practice is essential and a lot of issues people encounter the first time they give a new talk can be avoided if it is well rehearsed. When I am presenting new material to an audience I will have given that presentation to myself a dozen times — that is not an understatement. After that I know my material and when I give my talk again I’ll practice it a couple times in the days leading to the event. If you want a successful debut to your presentation, you need to practice.

Always practice out loud: I know you don’t want to listen to your voice. I promise you, the awkwardness fades away after 2 or 3 years. Practising out loud is one of the most important things because it allows you to accurately get an idea of time, and you can start experimenting with tone and pace.
Where do I start? Make sure you have a well rehearsed intro: a couple of sentences introducing yourself and the talk that you pretty much know by heart. Being able to go out there and get started without the fear of stumbling will alleviate a lot of nervousness.
Should I write a script? NO. Go through your slides one by one and present them out loud. You’re going to get stuck, you’re going to stumble and ramble. As you do, you’ll find a few different ways to express your point that work and you’ll know where you can cut down on the information and where you can expand. This is great if you need to be flexible with your time on the fly (if the conference is late for example) or if a question is asked in the middle of the talk. Trust the process.

You shouldn’t learn your talk by heart - but you should know it like the back of your hand.

Do I have to practice my talk from beginning to end every time? No. Usually when I start practising new material it takes me time to get through it and I will do it in chunks, but you do need to have done a few full runs (and timed) before the big day!
Practise the voice, the tone, the pace AND the body language!
Don’t hesitate to change your slides if they’re not working, but don’t keep tweaking minor things, or you’ll get yourself confused.