Will Bosworth

The medium length (15 to 45 minute) technical presentation is an important communication medium used in both industry and academia. This post recommends a structure for technical presentations that emphasizes getting the most important points of the presentation out as soon as possible. A common but weaker approach is to develop a linear narrative that builds to a final conclusion, which is nominally the most important information of the presentation.

The two approaches are contrasted in the figure below[1]. In these figures the x-axis is presentation time and the y-axis is information value delivered during the presentation. The top figure describes the linear narrative approach, in which the key insight is not delivered until the final moments of the presentation. The bottom figure shows the superior structure, which immediately emphasizes the most important information. This approach can benefit both the speaker’s preparation and audience members’ ability to attain and digest information.

The recommended presentation structure seeks to address the most important and interesting information as soon as possible. For example, if your research resulted in building something, show the thing you built as soon as possible. If your research resulted in useful scientific insight, show the insight you developed as soon as possible. Once the cat is out of the bag, the remaining time can be spent focusing on information that bolsters and contextualizes the primary point of the talk. This allows for the presenter to react and respond to audience interest in an unplanned manner – the presenter does not need to stay on a tight script in order to “get to the point,” which enables a richer potential set of context dependent presentations. Similarly, members of the audience struggle less to “figure out the point,” and are more likely to come away from the presentation with something useful if they doze off at some point.

In contrast, in the linear narrative structure the bulk of the presentation time is spent building up a story and “saving” the most important information of the talk for a big finish. At first glance it may seem sensible to arrange a presentation in the order in which work was performed, ending with triumphant completion. For example, a project may have begun with a problem and subsequent hypothesis. Then, an experimental procedure was designed and implemented and the results were analyzed. The results were compared to the hypothesis, and 27 minutes into the 30 minute presentation, the big finish – the exclamation point! – arrives: a scientific conclusion was reached. Additional important information is revealed in the 29^th minutes: there is new insight into what scientists may do now. Alternatively, time runs out and we get a rushed conclusion and don’t get to hear about the implications and context of the work ☹.[2]

There may be a time and place for a linear-narrative presentation, but in the context of technical presentations the structure is likely only suitable for a few projects or audiences. This brings up an important wrinkle: the optimal presentation structure should be dictated by the context of the presentation and the needs of the audience. In technical settings, placing early emphasis on important information addresses many common needs of an audience: audience members need some tangible thing to hold onto in order to efficiently filter and categorize the myriad technical details that may be stated or implied during a presentation. Furthermore, they need some tangible reason to justify struggling to spend the next 30 minutes grappling with your particular technical details.

Even gracious audience members may also need a tangible reason to justify why they came halfway across the world (!) to see you talk. This justification leads to my favorite sentence structure for developing and refining the key message of my own presentations: I practice opening my presentation with increasingly ambitious sentences, such as –

• “The reason I’m keeping you in the office an extra hour this afternoon is to show you my cool new thing…”

• “I came to Hong Kong today because I wanted to share my cool new thing…”

• “Thanks for coming to meet me today to consider giving me $10 billion because you think it could be a great investment. Let me show you my cool thing…”