Next week, it is a big day in my scientific carrier. I am going to give a talk at the international conference. I am very exited. I find it as a great chance to kind of force people to notice my research ;). It just seems to be more direct interaction than poster, at which people may stop or may not, depending on how interesting graphical explanation of your results you prepare. The problem is that my research is rather inter-disciplinary. It is too biological for chemists to notice, and too chemical for biologist to care.
At the same time, I am stressed like hell. Not only my boss already twice removed some slides from my posters, making me to invent my story from the very beginning. Also, telling the presentation is one thing, answering all the questions people may ask is another. They can ask me about anything they like, most probably- anything they are experts in. Which not necessarily is something connected to my research…
Anyway, I know a lot of people preparing for a presentation like that would prepare slides in Power Point, then sit down and write their whole presentation. And then I guess try to learn it by heart?
I don’t do that. I prepare slides, thinking how I am going to talk about them. And then I just run the presentation and just talk about them. It seem like harder way of doing that. But at least, I will find myself in front of 150 people in big room and if I freeze, I won’t need to remind myself what the heck was the first word of the first sentence of my introduction to my talk….
My boss already gave me one the advice I really like. Focus on your plot- explain axis and what is presented on the plot, and the story will come to you…
Anyway, I wonder how many people really write the presentation down, and how many prefer to go live?

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