Communicate your research with our toolkit at www.health.org.uk/research-kit
How to engage conference audiences with a memorable
presentation
A presentation is a sequence of concrete examples and stories that snap together
to form a compelling argument.
Chip and Dan Heath
Making presentations that stick – free online resource
There are many simple presentation techniques to help you engage your
audience. Here we provide an overview of the key principles to follow, some of
the newer technologies you can use, and how to create a high impact poster.
Tried and tested principles for a strong presentation
Be clear about the overarching argument you are making
Structure your presentation around your core argument, using stories and
examples to ground the ideas. This makes it more likely that your presentation
will be remembered. Make sure your content reects the theme and broader
aims of the event.
Your presentation should provide only a snapshot of your research
If you try and do justice to your many years of study in a short time slot, you are
more likely to overwhelm than enlighten. Focus on up to three major points that
you want to communicate, and devote at least half of your presentation to these
points. This means stripping out almost all unnecessary details that don’t support
your headline messages.
Ideas for high impact
conference presentations
Section
2
Communicate your research with our toolkit at www.health.org.uk/research-kit
Take time to think through the relevance of your research to the audience
Tailor your presentation to reect their knowledge, interests and concerns. A
presentation to a lay audience would be framed very differently to what you might
present to academic colleagues. It sounds obvious, but it is surprising how often this
is overlooked. When presenting to an academic audience, don’t dwell so long on your
methodology that you run out of time to engage them in the ndings.
Bring some of your own personality to the presentation
If you show people why this research question matters to you, you may also tap into
their interests and motivations. Smile at your audience and make eye contact with them.
Don’t overlook the powerful roles that humour, curiosity and surprise play
in injecting and sustaining interest
Humour can be difcult to pitch, especially for an international audience, but if you
think you can strike the right note it’s a very effective way of bringing your audience
onside. You can also inspire curiosity among your audience by posing questions
and revealing the answers. This works particularly well in cases where your research
ndings may be unexpected or counterintuitive.
If you need to plan for a conference presentation, you might nd this checklist helpful.
Newer technology and approaches
Developments in technology have greatly enhanced researchers’ abilities to produce
presentations with high visual impact, to use multimedia and to interact with their
audience. Here we provide a brief overview of some of the latest trends.
Aiming for greater visual impact
There are lots of ways to make academic presentations more visually engaging.
Professor Ronald Berk has analysed the research ndings on the effectiveness
of PowerPoint presentations. He emphasises the role that good imagery plays in
transferring knowledge. He encourages academics to use ‘bold, colourful, 2D (not 3D),
high impact, high quality, strong, dynamic (animated) graphics (photos, charts, graphs,
tables, diagrams) that make a specic point with no detail’.
A Prezi presentation can have great visual impact. The tool is generally more useful
than PowerPoint for non-linear presentations as it enables the user to zoom in and out,
and to skip forwards and backwards.
Communicate your research with our toolkit at www.health.org.uk/research-kit
The presentation style, PechaKucha, which originated in Japan in 2003, is a fast-paced,
image-rich presentation in which 20 slides are presented, each lasting 20 seconds. This
approach is suitable for events where audiences are expected to listen to a number of
presentations in a short space of time.
Making effective use of multimedia and music
Another growing trend is for researchers to include lm, audio, animations and even
a soundtrack in their presentations. In his paper (mentioned above), Professor Berk
points to research that shows how music can help to sustain attention and make a
presentation more memorable.
Embedding rich media in your presentation is easier to achieve than ever, and there is
no shortage of online guides to help you do this.
Involving your audience
Event technologies now provide more opportunities for researchers to interact with
their audience in real time, either in person or online. The more you can actively involve
your audience in a presentation, the more impact you are likely to have. Check in
advance with the event organiser about the facilities they have to enable live voting or
to crowdsource questions from the audience – for example, through the use of Sli.do.
There are also simpler ways to engage your audience. These include posing questions
for them to consider as you present, asking for a show of hands on a given question,
or involving them in a short exercise.
When Professor Veronica Hope-Hailey, Dean of the School of Management at the
University of Bath, opens a presentation about her work studying behaviour change in
the workplace, she sometimes asks her audience to pick up their pen in their opposite
hand and write. She then asks them how this made them feel. This simple, practical
exercise encourages her audience to identify with the more abstract insights from the
research she presents.
Communicate your research with our toolkit at www.health.org.uk/research-kit
Creating a high-impact conference poster
Few people producing conference posters pay enough attention to the importance of
visual impact. This means that by following a few simple tips, you can easily make your
poster stand out.
• Pay as much attention to the design and visual approach as you pay to the text.
• Choose a theme that is going to be of most relevance to your audience,
providing only a snapshot of the study in relation to this theme.
• Hone down the supporting information to reinforce only two to three key
messages about the research.
• Make sure there is lots of white space on the poster, complemented by concise
copy and striking images, diagrams and/or photographs.
• If your aim is to network, make sure you are near the poster during breaks so
that you can engage interested parties in a conversation about the work.
Resources
• Times Higher Education’s top 10 tips for presenting at academic conferences.
• A summary of research on the effective use of PowerPoint by Ronald Berk,
Professor Emeritus in Biostatics and Measurement at Johns Hopkins University.
• A guide to making memorable presentations by Chip and Dan Heath.
• To watch a master in the art of presentations at work, watch a video of the
late Hans Rosling, Professor of Global Health at the Karolinska Institute.
