Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
contexts. These repetitions can strengthen the talk, but at the same can be passed
over if time is tight.
The Introduction
Begin well. The audience's opinion of you and of the topic will form quickly and
a bad first impression is hard to erase. The first few sentences should show that the
talk will be interesting—you can make a surprising claim, argue that some familiar
or intuitive solution is incorrect, or show why the problem to be solved is of practical
consequence.
Many speakers begin with an outline that lists the topics to be covered. At the
beginning of the talk, however, the audience may not even be familiar with the
terminology, and such outlines are quickly forgotten because they have no context.
Outline the talk's structure if you want to, but not on the first slide. Before you reach
the outline, make sure that the goal of the talk is clear. That is, explain where you
are going before explaining how you will get there.
“This talk is about new graph data structures. I'll begin by explaining graph
theory and show some data structures for representing graphs. Then I'll talk
about existing algorithms for graphs, then I'll show my new algorithms. I'll
show experimental results on our cluster machine and then show why the
algorithms are useful for some practical graph traversal problems.”
Not only is this a poor introduction, but the outlined structure is poor too. (But note
that the speaking style in this example is fine; it is a representation of a typical fluent
speaker, punctuated for readability.) A better introduction is as follows, of a talk in
which interesting material is discussed much earlier on.
“My talk today is about new graph data structures. There are many practical
problems that can be solved by graphmethods, such as the travelling salesman
problem, where good solutions can be found with reasonable resources so
long as an optimal solution isn't needed. But even these solutions are slow
if the wrong data structures are used. I'll begin by explaining approximate
solutions to the salesman problem and showing why existing data structures
aren't ideal, then I'll explainmy newdata structures and showhow to use them
to speed up the travelling salesman algorithms. I conclude with examples of
where the new method makes a real difference.”
The speaker should then continue on the topic of why the algorithm is useful, and,
once the main concepts have been introduced, present the outline of the main part of
the talk.
Some talks can be introduced with a tale or anecdote, to motivate the need for a
solution to the problem or to illustrate what would happen if the problem were not
solved. For example, a talk on automatic generation of acceptable timetables began
with an account of the timetabling problems at a certain large university; the speaker
made a good story of the estimate that, without new algorithms, the timetabling of
