How to improve your scientific presentations

Summary

This full day hands-on workshop is meant to give you practical help to improve your next scientific presentation (i.e. talk based on slides). Given the timing we could focus on an upcoming conference oral presentations and improve them. But any other presentation purpose is welcome too of course. I will focus on main principles of presentations with some aspects for different presentation purposes. It’s very little about specific design principles, colors, style. It is about, how to tell an understandable research story about your own scientific project/results. It is a very applied course with hands on using your own material.

The workshop is meant to be interactive in an informal setting. It’s mainly based on my own taste and experiences of listening and giving bazillions of presentations. I want to create an atmosphere of trust, where all participants can give open and honest feedback. This workshop should help you. I will show with few real examples of slides and different presentation styles how the 1) way you present your scientific story as well as how 2) different ways of slide structures and elements can improve your presentation skills and the way how your audience perceive, understand and remember your research.

You will need a finalized! presentation you want to show and improve, a laptop with the respective software to work on the slides. Depending on the number of participants some (or all) will present examples of these presentations before and after we jointly worked on the slides. Be prepared to present your slides in front of the participants. Be prepared to receive critical feedback meant to improve your presentation.

I am convinced that at the end of this workshop participants leave with improved slides and a better understanding how to structure future presentations and how to tell stronger stories about their research.

About the lecturer:
Marten is a globally renowned ecologist, leader of iDiv’s synthesis centre and the Integration unit. He is an enthusiastic science communicator (e.g. TEDx) and with his long term experience in listening and giving numerous presentations and as a mentor of >50 Postdocs at iDiv, he has helped many scientist to improve their scientific presentations.
https://www.idiv.de/staff/marten-winter