Caveat: I have never live tweeted at a conference. So I won’t be offended if you stop reading now (also: I won’t know). I have, however, read about live tweeting at conferences, and enjoyed reading tweets about a talk I gave at the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood last Fall. And I’m in Austin at SRA, and for the first time (at least that I’ve noticed), the #SRA2014 hashtag seems quite active and engaged, so I expect lots of live tweeting to happen. I want to be ready.

Profhacker has a great post about live tweeting conferences. The best tips I take from that post, and others I have read, are:

In the audience:

Be respectful. You may disagree with the presenter, and there are ways to do that politely. But the 140 character maximum is quite limiting, and subtlety can be lost with brevity. Err on the side of respect.

Consider people who are not attending the conference. You likely have more followers not attending than attending the conference, and that’s certainly true for the session. Make sure your tweets make sense for people not sitting in the room.

Don’t overtweet. When someone in my feed is at a conference and is tweeting minute-by-minute, I tend to get overwhelmed and wish I could turn them off.  It may be okay for one session you’re particularly excited about, but not 8 hours a day for 3 days.  

Clearly attribute. Maybe no one has been brought up on charges for plagiarism on twitter. But make sure that if you are directly quoting, you provide quotation marks, and that even if not quoting, you acknowledge the speaker either by username, or if not on twitter, by full name.

First character matters. It’s common for people to begin a tweet with someone else’s username, as in: “@ClaireKampDush explains her strategy for being a productive writer pre-tenure: https://u.osu.edu/adventuresinhdfs/2014/03/06/work-and-family-and-one-night-a-week/ “. Did you know when you start a tweet with a username, only people who follow you AND the other person will see it in their feed? Profhacker recommends starting the tweet with a period (.) beforehand, so all of your followers can see the tweet.

Hashtag. If you want people beyond your followers to read your tweets, use the conference hashtag.

Easily use the conference hashtag. Typing a hashtag each time is awkward. Profhacker recommends text expansion, which could work for you. If you’re lower tech, simply create text and copy it, so you can paste it straight in each time. You can create one simply for the conference (#SRA2014), or if live tweeting a particular talk, you can include the name of a presenter as well, including the . at the front (.@MimiArbeit #SRA2014). Then for each tweet, simply paste it in at the start.

Type quietly!

Think about your prior and subsequent tweets. Twitter is a very public forum (unless you have your account set to private). If you are live tweeting with a conference hashtag, other conference attendees are likely to check out your twitter account. Graduate students in particular need to think about impression management (though of course everyone should think about it). Don’t have your tweet right before the session read something like, “Didn’t think I could drink that many margaritas and still make it to an 8:30 talk! #multitasking”).  

As a presenter:

Provide your username on your slides. If someone live tweets your talk, s/he can attribute it to you easily if you tell them how.

Post a tweet right before you present, with, if you create one, a hashtag for your session.

Try to respond to tweets after you present.

“The post Live tweeting conferences first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on March 19, 2014.”

Sometimes I really, really, heart google.

I am prepping my notes for tomorrow's class. It is late. When I post a version for the students, I like to remove all of my own notes in the notes section. In the past I have gone through this process slide by slide. But tonight I wondered if PP could do it all at once. And google found this information for me (apologies - there is a very loud embedded video).

Essentially, it's a feature in "inspect document" where you can choose to have it check "presentation notes." Then when it comes up as identifying information, you can ask it to delete all of it.

That saved about 10 minutes of my life. Which I have filled with this post. So you should thank google, too.

“The post Powerpoint trick #1: Remove all notes at once first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on January 12, 2014.”

Any time I attend a talk, I think not only about the content, but about the presentation style. So, in the audience at the recent conference of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood, I reflected on characteristics of strong presentations. I won’t try to cover everything, but here is some advice on presentation style and slide formatting:

1.    Length. No one ever complains if your talk is too short. “Oh no, I have time to go to the bathroom AND grab a coffee! But I really wanted to hear more about object permanence.” If your talk is too long, you could cut into another presenter’s time, or the audience’s lunch break. Err on the side of short.

2.    Avoid rushing. If you realize partway through your talk that you are running out of time, don’t just start talking faster. Talking fast means that people will miss huge chunks of what you are saying. Decide which points or slides to skip; you can always return to them if someone asks a question at the end. Better yet, when you prepare your talk, think about what you might cut, so you’re prepared to skip it if needed. Yes, I know, every single word in your talk is important. But only if people have time to hear it. Also, once you’ve been presenting for a while, you will learn whether you’re someone who speaks faster in front of an audience than when practicing, or slower in front of an audience. I’m the latter – I tend to add extraneous comments that slow me down, so I always know I need to add a few minutes of cushion to my timed practice talk.

3.    Practice with an audience. I gave my first research talk in 1993, but I still do practice talks with my lab group. Explaining to real people and watching the looks on their faces helps me realize what needs better explanation, and what can be cut. My students’ feedback certainly helps me improve. Things that are perfectly clear to you because you’ve been living the data for 2 years are not necessarily clear to others. Also, seeing others’ practice talks is good training for improving your own presentations.

  4.    Time with each slide. Do not put a slide up for less time than it takes for people to read it. Either cut the information on it, or spend more time with it. And do not simply read what is written on the slide. Provide more information verbally than is written, otherwise, your presence is superfluous.

5.    Provide a roadmap. If you’re giving a standard 15-20 minute presentation on one specific research study, then a sentence or two at the beginning may be enough of a roadmap. If your talk is longer or covers multiple studies (like a job talk), give an overview slide that provides a roadmap of where you are going. 

6.    Be yourself. When I gave a practice job talk in graduate school I received a fair bit of advice about my mannerisms, including talking with my hands less, never touching my hair, dropping specific words I used, etc. I know it is possible to train yourself to change these behaviors. But at the time, when I tried to practice without gesturing, for instance, I felt paralyzed and kept tripping over my words. I decided to be myself. I got the job. Last week when my conference-buddy/roommate walked in while I was practicing my talk, she laughed that I was gesturing, seated alone, in front of my laptop. I still gesture. People deal, and I feel more comfortable. Of course, if you have a very distracting habit, like constantly flipping your hair or say “um” every other word, you should consider working on it. But not right before you leave for a conference.

7.    Humor. My husband used to be a standup comic. When he lectures, he can do totally random things like suddenly show this video during a class on factor analysis, and people think it’s hilarious. If I tried to do that, people would think I was a dork (see what I mean). If you’re not funny, don’t try to be. Think about the ways in which you are funny, the ways you make friends and colleagues laugh, and use that type of humor – if appropriate – in your presentations. Only use humor in ways you are comfortable.

8.    Font. As with posters, use big size font. And use this font for everything – not just text, but figures, captions, tables, etc. Never cut and paste or screen shot a Word or PDF table and paste it into your slide.

9.    Color. As with posters, dark text on a light background is generally easier to read from far away than the reverse.

10.  Present visually appealing slides. Make your slides easy to read, but also interesting enough to keep attention. Figures, tables, and occasional images are all useful elements.

11.  Avoid dancing frogs. Don’t go overboard on interesting elements. About a decade ago I attended a talk where every slide had a dancing frog. I don’t remember the topic, but I do remember the dancing frogs. Don’t be remembered for the dancing frogs.

12.  Proofread. Please, please, please spell check, proofread, and ask someone else to do it for you as well. If your slides have multiple typos, people in the audience are going to wonder if you’re equally careless with your data management and analyses. Or they’re going to nudge their friends every time they notice a typo. Really. 

13.  No reference list. Sticking up a slide with a long list of references for a few seconds at the end of your talk doesn’t add to the presentation.

14.  Be ready for questions. People will likely ask you questions. Prepare as best you can. I am usually ready with more details about my data collection and analyses. People rarely actually ask me the questions I’m prepared for, but I’m ready if they do. It’s hard to prepare for the questions that people actually ask, like, “Have you ever looked at X” (where X = the exact topic that the questioner studies, or X = the unexpected behavior of the questioner’s adolescent son). If you don’t know an answer, it’s okay to say so. If you can, describe something similar that doesn’t completely address the question, acknowledging that it’s not a direct match (“I know it’s not exactly what you asked, but we do have data on HPV vaccination that suggests that vaccination is higher among more religious students”).  You may find variations of these phrases useful: “That’s really interesting.” “We haven’t analyzed it that way, but it would be interesting to do so.” “We didn’t collect data on that topic, but it would be a great future study.” Whatever you do, don’t get defensive. And try not to spend too much time answering any one question if there are a number of other people waiting to ask questions as well.

15.  Water. Always have water when you give a talk. Of course it helps if your throat is dry. But it also gives you an excuse to pause if you need to gather your thoughts.

16.  Attend other talks. The best way to improve your presentation style is to attend many talks and think about what you do and don’t like from other presenters. As with most things, the more you observe and the more you practice, the more skilled you will become, particularly if you focus on continually improving.

“The post How to give an engaging conference presentation, first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s Blog on October 25, 2013.”

Last week I attended a conference, the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood. As is true at all conferences, I saw great presentations, mediocre presentations, and poor presentations. Today I want to write about posters, and ways to present your arguments and data so that people notice, read it, and remember it.

First, a tangent. I very clearly remember my first poster. It was 1994, and I was a second year graduate student. Back then, at least in my field, no one made one piece posters. We used power point to print out a bunch of 8½ X 11 sheets, glued/taped them to construction paper, and pinned them to poster board. The night before I headed to Coronado, I was on the floor of the lab, laying out my poster sheets, and MEASURING to determine the exact # of inches needed between each so that they were perfectly equidistant. I don’t do that anymore.

But I still do obsess about how my poster looks. Because people notice, and you could have the most amazing data in the world, but if no one can read it, or can process it, they will never know. People walking through a room with 100+ posters aren't going to spend much time at each one. They are not going to read tons of words. So, either you cut back on the number of words and decide what's important, or they skim what you presented and they decide what's important.

How do you make your poster noticeable, easy to read, and memorable?

1. Clear and descriptive title. Have you ever been excited to read a poster and discovered the content didn't match the title? Make sure that your title clearly describes the work you present. Make it catchy if you can. I'm terrible at titles and generally go for straightforward rather than compelling titles. Either way, don't sacrifice clarity for creativity. And don't make it too long. If you want to craft a perfect title, here's an interesting article about creating powerful book titles.

2.      Font size. If you are a traditionally aged graduate student, almost everyone at the conference will be older than you are. And so will their eyes. 12 point font size should be banished from posters. If you are supposed to read it sitting at a desk, you cannot read it standing at a poster peering between other people while balancing an hors d’oeuvres plate. I’d say never go below 24. But bigger is better. If you’re not sure, print out one slide of your poster, and see how far away you need to stand from it to see it. Now imagine someone with worse vision. And increase the size.

3.      Bullets, not paragraphs. Save the paragraphs for the amazing manuscript you write based on the data in your poster. In your poster, use bullet points. Make each point as clear and succinct as possible. And then cut a few more words.

4.      Break up points. Instead of listing 3 things within one sentence, use a bullet format. As an example:

Instead of this:

• The majority of past research on sexual behavior has predominantly focused on vaginal sex, on distinguishing adolescents who have had vaginal sex from those who have not had vaginal sex, and on preventing negative outcomes such as unwanted pregnancy and STIs.

Do this:

• Past research on sexual behavior focuses on:

                > vaginal sex

                >  distinguishing adolescents who have and have not had vaginal sex

                 >  negative outcomes such as unwanted pregnancy and STIs.

5.      Avoid filler words. Read through several times and think of all the words you can remove without changing the meaning.

6.      Make everything as visual as possible. Instead of putting participant information in text, can you table it? Can you present a measure’s items in a table? Can you report percentages as a pie chart or bar graph? Even correlations can be presented as a bar graph, which is great for visually comparing the magnitude of associations. 

7.      No abstract needed. The poster itself is abbreviated, so say everything concisely and you don’t need to summarize it.

8.      Use symbols when possible.

9.      Dark text, light background. I haven’t recently seen definitive data to support this preference, but in general, I find it easier to read dark text on light background.

10.      Ditch APA. Okay, not completely. I am rather obsessive when it comes to APA style (ask my students). That said, I throw away much of it when making a poster. You can have single spacing in your poster. You can use vertical lines in your tables to make them more readable. So, keep APA style for your poster’s references, but think about readability for the rest of it.

11.  Clarity in methods. Make your methods section as clear and brief as possible. No need for sentences here – use lists, bullets, and tables.

12.  Go beyond your findings in the discussion. Don’t simply summarize your findings in the discussion. Someone just read them literally 1 minute ago. Briefly link back to the prior studies you summarized, the theory you tested, and forward to the implications and next steps.

13.  Have others proofread it. There’s no way you can catch everything by yourself. Your co-authors are also too close to the ideas and data (how many times has your adviser read your thesis?). So, ask someone else to proofread it for you.

14.  Prepare for questions. Someone is going to ask “can you tell me what you found?” Have a pithy response ready.

Do you have any questions about how to design a poster? What other advice do you have for presenting a compelling poster at a conference?

The post Posters That People Will Read and Remember, first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s Blog on October 21, 2013.