What to remember while preparing for Presentations?

This is one of those topics that should be written about 'pronto'

Soooo, I had to make a presentation today... on a subject very alien to me.... in front of people whose knowledge/ experience was daunting.

I spent the whole of yesterday (apart from Kick-boing and talking to family and other important beings) trying to make sense of the paper I was to present. It took much more time than anticipated.
Lesson 1: The most touted trick is to BE PREPARED. And one can never under-emphasize its importance.

I spent too much time trying to understand. And too little time on the actual presentation.
Lesson 2: Don't lose focus on the goal. You have to ultimately present it. Its a very good idea to understand, but unless you are going to teach it or unless you are going to be held accountable for every word that emanates from your mouth, it is important to balance the time well between understanding and preparing.

I started the ppts too late.
Lesson 3: Start ppts early enough (especially if you have less (in my case, NO) experience in making them). The ppts are really important (though not as important as your talk... but they do cover up for a lot of things, and they, most importantly, serve as hints to YOU).

Understand the audience.
Lesson 4: Again, a common idea. But its true. Your presentation should be tailer-made to the audience, and if it is a small focussed group of people then you have no excuse for not customizing it appropriately.

The audience is understanding
Corrolary to Lesson 4: When the audience sees that you have made an effort and you are trying to put accross a point, they nod. (They were exceptionally nice to me). So don't go with the mind-set that 'they are out to get you'.

Rehearse!
Lesson 5: Unless you imagine the audience and go through the presentation with the slides, you have conquered only 20% of the battle. (80-20 principle?). When you present it to a dummy audience, you realize that the slides are not in the right order, the matter does not flow right, it doesnt sound convincing, some things are not clear, some things are redundant. You might come to a point of editing every slide until the ppt is nowhere close to what you had initiallly made. This is a good sign.

Become the audience
Lesson 6: Present to yourself. Do you follow it? If YOU don't, there is very little chance that anyone else will!

The slides
Lesson 7: Big fonts. Big images. Less words. Fun words. Flowing concepts. Intersperse with questions. Don't make them very animated and fancy (perhaps a personal preference here).

Time yourself.
Lesson 8: Either you will get too excited and finish it early, or you will start being repetitive and take too long. Ideally, be prepared for either case. Have some 'extra slides', just in case. I didn't, and the audience was so smart that I thought I was saying redundant stuff, and ended up skipping some slides. Finished it earlier than expected. Not a bad thing, but its a good idea to do justice to the paper/matter that you are presenting.

Be prepared for the actual presentation
Lesson 9: Definitely don't be late. Coz you are going to realize that you forgot the 'adapter', and now you cant connect the projector to the computer. Some nice soul will offer his laptop, but you won't have a pen drive. Another nice soul will offer a pen drive. Now you realize that your ppt is in KeyNote (a Mac presentation tool) and it wont work everywhere. So you have to convert it to a pdf. Basically, there may be initial hurdles. And unless you trust the stars to be aligned in just the right order at the right time, be prepared for the actual presentation and the technicalities.


Google the paper!
Lesson 10: Very very important. Most of the questions the audience shoot will be anwered by the Google Search results of the first page. It is very important to know some background (defiitely not a good thing to not know when and where the paper was published).


Have an opinion
Lesson 11: Your presentation may be unbiased, but eventually in one way or the other you will have to evaluate/compare/critique the paper (and so will others want to do it). Ideally your presentation should not put the paper in a bad or good light. But at the same time, you should have an opnion on it.

Smile before you begin
Lesson 12: Its a presentation after all!


My audience was reallly good. Although they obviously knew a lot, they interestingly and attentively heard it. They put forth lots of questions (some of them I was embarrassed to not know... hence the lessons :-) )
In the end, the instructor and another student praised me.

Final lesson: Appreciate genuinely. It helps ALOT.

Realizations

Earlier it wa all happiness interjected with periods of loneliness.

Now it is all loneliness interjected with periods of.... loneliness!

As I was explaining my student the code during office hours, she was amazed by some of the super-basic tricks. She didn't know that 'tabbing' can help one browse thru the directories and the up arrow gives the previous command. She was amazed.
I realized that I was in the exact same position just 5 months back.

I then realized, I am jsut accumulating some information. But is it simply appending stuff to the data repositiry residing in my head, or is anything being appended to the knowledge/wisdom repository as well?

I hope so... But I think not.
:(

Last Weekend

was gooood... what with ma and pa here... and oter events/people.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder... and the legs go weaker :)

The dance was good. The audience was fun (P and S cheered alot.. Ma says she did too.. btu didn't hear THE voice)

The color thats 'totally in' is Tango Red
The lines of Dhoom2 that are totally in:-
and when love comes your way
you'll know its here to stay
you'll steal the chance 'cose you're
the thief of hearts yeah
you'll win with a galance
walk away with your romance
there's no more ther's no backing out now

There were many other things that were 'totally in'.

Learnt new lessons:-
1. Expressions are probably the most important part of the dance.. If you enjoy dancing, others enjoy watchin
2. What goes around, comes around.
3. If you correct your students, they will correct you too :)
4. Tongue is the strongest muscle of the body
5. Reading is often more thrilling than watching.

The bookstore problem

You are in a bookstore with the intention (and resources) to buy ONE book, and all the books are wrapped in plastic. Is there a way other than judging a book by its cover?

And what if you find the covers of more than one book interesting? How do you judge different books based on the cover?

One would think that based on apriori knowledge/information/wisdom you buy a book which had the most interesting cover. But what if AFTER buyin the book, you happen to read the preface of another book... And now THAT book ALSO seems interesting...

Is that a start of something?

The ice-cream problem

I go to an ice-cream parlor. I haven't tasted an ice-cream earlier, but 'heard' that it tastes delicious.

There are 27 varieties. I have to make a choice between these flavors. I choose a flavor.. educted guess, I would think. I like the ice-cream. It's not AS good as I had heard, but it's good.

I presume that I had not made the BEST decision about the flavor. But now I have more knowledge (Experience) and hence, the next decision wil be better. And next time, I summon the courage to make a choice of another flavor. A more educated guess, again I think.

And I like this flavor much more... But then, the mind is not happy. It wants to 'explore' further.
And it has seen the pattern - more educated the guess, the greater chance of the flavor being tastier.

So, next time I go to the ice cream parlor, I choose ANOTHER flavor. It's delicious. It's as good as it can get. I think it can't get better. But the weak mind tempted... to make the next guess... to explore a vertex on the next level of the traversal..

I do that. And this time, I also gets toppings... peanuts, oreo cookies etc. Now the ice-cream is thoroughly tasty. I am GLAD I took the step.

But there are questions:-

1. There is a modification to the problem. Once I choose another flavor, the previous flavors are discarded for good, and I cant get back to them. Under such circumstances, when should I stop exploration?
Should I stop when I find a GOOD flavor, even though there are chances that I might find a better flavor in the next step of exploration? (It is MY belief that the next educated guess will be better... but that need not be true).

2. Was the last ice-cream better because of the toppings? Or was it inherently good?

3. There are ice-cream flavors that are reallly popular (recommended). Am I biased towards those?

There are so many subtleties that are not captured in this analogy, although they can be.

Anyway, my roomie suggests a similar story - about a shishya (student) and his guru. THe guru asks the shishya to go to the forest and pick up the tallest branch, on the condition that e cannot pick up a brach on his way back.

Well... this is easy to solve... coz one can keep hold of the tallest branch SO FAR, and then discard it when a taller branch is seen. (FInd the max number in an array algorithm).

But this solution UNFORTUNATELY does not hold for all situations!

The bike-path Teaches

I enjoy enjoying the scene around me when I bike.
I like to leave the clutched handle and free my clenched fists.

If I am biking up-slope, I can never leave my hands.

If I am biking on level ground. I can somehow manage to leave my hands ... but my eye is tied to the path and I cannot look around.

If I am going down-hill at a steep gradient, I can leave the hands. But again, I have to be cautious. One small mistake can cause me to topple and ruin the whole ride.

However, if I find a down-hill path with a gradual descent, I can continue peddling and watch around and ENJOY, without any effort or fear of falling.

The aim is to find that path... THAT balance where one is not struggling and there is no inertia... where one is enjoying the journey without concentrating too much on the journey... without any strain of intense effort, or fear of 'toppling' over.

That's what an ideal income should be!
:-)

Quotes

• A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand

• I am always right. Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.

• Multitasking is listening to you ans pretening I am interested.

• Grow your own dope - plant a man

• Sarcasm is one of the services I offer

• I am deeply superficial

• Roses are red, Violets are blue, I am schizophrenic and so am I

• Life is short - take the scenic route

• Perfection is the enemy of 'good enough'

• If you dont have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it all over?

• Ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision?

• We make a living by what we et... We make a life by what we give

• YOuth is not a period in time, it is a state of the mind

• The heart has reasons that reason does not know

• Be yourself... who else is better qualified?? ;-)