Conference paper woes

[ossamenta]

A few days ago I was linked to a post on academic conference etiquette, which in turn linked to a post on conference rules. I thought they could be very useful, since this will be my first talk at a "proper" conference. Some things were obvious, such as practice your talk beforehand and don't overrun your time slot. Although I got a bit worried when they said that a 20 minute talk (check) would equal 10-12 full A4 pages. I have three... Admittedly, both pages seem to run under the assumption that you will write your talk and then read what you've written - something I'm not so keen on, as it doesn't captivate the audience, especially if it's a topic they're not very interested in. The better talks I've heard have been people using notes and keywords rather than a full text, which is the method I'm planning to use. I haven't "read" it out loud yet, hopefully tomorrow when I've got most of the images for the powerpoint set up. I've got the slot just before lunch, so I figure that if I'm a couple of minutes short people will probably not mind too much. But I better not end up with a five minute talk and twenty minutes for questions!

I still can't find some images I want to use. Department of "I know I have seen such an image somewhere (during the 17 years I've studied archaeology)" is not very helpful.

Comments

[oursin]

First link not working?
10-12 doublespaced A4 pages is too long for 20 minutes, I would say. I usually allow around 8.
I tend to read my papers - because I use a lot of quoted material partly, and also to keep myself on track - but it's how you read rather than if. Look up and talk to the audience, don't bury your head and mumble.

And if you have slides, DON'T just read out the text on the slides! there are few things more irritating than the talk which is both written up on the slides and being merely reiterated by the speaker.

[ossamenta]

Thanks for letting me know about the broken link, and for your advice.

I don't have many quotes, so my slides are mainly images and diagrams. I guess that the ratio of written talk/keynotes and amount of slides is so dependent on your field and topic. I can imagine several fields where reading would make sense, as you say, if there are lots of quotes. I've also seen so many hate the use of powerpoint in talks, but I fail to see how for example art history topics could be presented without any images.

[oursin]

Powerpoint is great when you have images - it's a vast improvement over slides and making sure they are in the right order/right way up/your hosting institution actually has a slide projector with working carousel or slide-feeder. I can hardly stand it when somone whacks up a PP slide of text of a huge quotation and reads the entire thing. Or has bullet points and reads them out as they come sliding into place.