Will Bosworth

Tag: writing

September 19, 2025

On Inventing

Inventing new things is a gratifying part of my career; a list of some of my inventions, as USPTO granted patents, are pasted below. At work I get a lot of questions about how I patent so much. The short answer is 1.) I learned how to write in grad school, and I am more diligent than most people about actually writing down my inventions and submitting them to the patent lawyer; 2.) I intentionally carve out time to be open to inventing: I create a purposeful habit and put in the time; 3.) I try not to be too perfect and I try to be kind to myself when my “new” idea for the week ends up being a dud. Being knowledgeable about my field(s) is helpful to avoid reinventing the wheel, though if I invent something that already exists, I try to use it as positive feedback that my idea had merit.

A few books have influenced my approach on the topic:

FUNdaMENTALs of Design is a textbook that Professor Slocum used when he taught 2.007, the Mechanical Engineering design course. I had the good fortune of taking 2.007 with Alex, and also performing undergraduate research with him; he also oversaw parts of my master’s thesis work.

If you’re not prepared for it, it can be exhausting and intimidating to work with someone who is so full of ideas. But, if properly harnessed it is super inspiring and fun. One grad student in Prof Slocum’s lab once told me, “Alex has an interesting idea every hour, and my job is to figure out which ones are the really good ones.” I think Alex’s book does a great job of describing how to be open to new ideas while also being disciplined about when and how to act on those ideas.

Songwriter’s on songwriting interviews 50+ famous and successful songwriters. Some writers start with words; others start with melodies. Some do it in their heads; some write it down; others record snippets. Some write at 10am every morning, put in their 2 or 3 good hours and stop; others wait until late in the night and binge. One thing is for sure: all of them write a lot of songs. Even “one hit wonders”–those who only get known for writing one song–write a huge amount content.

Thomas Edison is famously quoted, “If you want to have a good idea, have alot of them.” The same is true for any creative endeavor: if you want to write a good song, write alot of them. If you want to invent, invent.

This video of The Police is a neat look into their songwriting process. In 1981, The Police were hugely successful giants, but they still faced the same struggles and process needs as any other creative person.

Bird by Bird is a charming text on famous author Anne Lamott’s approach to writing. I read it over and over again because it makes me feel courageous. I’ve adopted the index card habit from the book: I keep boxes and boxes of “ideas” and other plans, and when I’ve got spare time I open the box and see what I might push on next.

October 15, 2013

A recommended structure for technical presentations

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.

informationAndTime

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 29th 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…”

[1] Prof David Trumper sketched this image while providing me useful critical presentation feedback.

[2] The linear-narrative becomes particularly intractable when describing work in which much of the engineering/scientific steps were performed iteratively.