When The Scientist Presents

Latest Episodes:

presentation traps 4 – the mouth trap Jan 27, 2010

Show notes

image source: Flickr. Fresh tomato sauce by Urbanfoodie33 It is the 10:15 am coffee break. Outside the meeting room is a long table covered in cream-coloured linen. On it the conference attendees find the traditional offerings: coffee, cream, Ceylon tea, brown and white sugar, and finger food to relieve the hunger pangs and make the long … Continue reading "presentation traps 4 – the mouth trap"

Presentation traps 3 – the joke is on you Jan 25, 2010

Show notes

Photo Source: Flickr; Author: By Creativity+Timothy K. Hamilton “Start with a joke”, “deride the audience”, “make them like you by making them laugh”, the pundits say. And out they go, on a limb as always, out go the serious presenters who end up being the only ones who laugh at the end of their jokes. The … Continue reading "Presentation traps 3 – the joke is on you"

Presentation traps 2 – Forced Audience Interaction at the start of the talk Jan 25, 2010

Show notes

Source: Flickr; Photo by Jesarqit. “Probe the audience”, “Interact with the audience”, the pundits say. And out on a limb they go, the misfortunate presenters for whom good advice but poor timing garner nothing but the deathly silence of an unsympathetic audience. I recall the young scientist whose work featured the discovery of a gene … Continue reading "Presentation traps 2 – Forced Audience Interaction at the start of the talk"

Presentation traps 1 – Hazardous comparisons Jan 24, 2010

Show notes

With this, the first of several blog entries on presentation traps, we are entering the quagmires and the quicksands where many presenters get trapped. These traps are mostly concealed and presenters realise they are trapped far too late to fix the problem. These traps are avoidable because the ones who lay them are none others … Continue reading "Presentation traps 1 – Hazardous comparisons"

021 Presenting to a lay audience Jan 06, 2010

Show notes

Today our podcast features Dr Cleo Choong. She had to give a presentation to members of parliament at the British House of Commons as part of a competition for the engineer of the year award. What is it like to present to such a prestigious gathering of elected congressmen? Did she win the competition? Find … Continue reading "021 Presenting to a lay audience"

Who is responsible for communicating the outcome of research Dec 17, 2009

Show notes

This question is explored in a community forum of the online journal “The-Scientist.com”. You will find it here ->The importance of good communication skills in science (you may need a subscription to access this page). Here was my answer. I would like to attempt answering this important question using two metaphors: Communication of a signal … Continue reading "Who is responsible for communicating the outcome of research"

020 Telecom metaphor for effective scientific communications Dec 10, 2009

Show notes

Our new guest, Dr Francis Yeoh, CEO of the National Research Foundation, is drawing a useful analogy from the field of telecommunications to clarify the duties of the scientist who presents, and clearly define the conditions under which communication to an audience is effective. Transmitter, Receiver, Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)… This fruitful metaphor will … Continue reading "020 Telecom metaphor for effective scientific communications"

continuity bugs in linear slide presentations Nov 28, 2009

Show notes

Whenever you take a non linear media and flatten it (make it linear), you introduce problems of two kinds: 1) Discontinuities in logic. The audience needs to remember what was connected to what, earlier in your presentation, to see the connection logic. 2) Discontinuity in time. As time passes, the audience remembers less and less … Continue reading "continuity bugs in linear slide presentations"

Learning from Henri Poincaré Nov 21, 2009

Show notes

Henri Poincaré, the French physicist and mathematician was an outstanding scientist. In his book, La Science et la Méthode (Science and Method – Dover publication translated by Francis Maitland), he states that “to understand” means different things to different people. The scientists in your audience expect to be able to “understand” what is presented, so … Continue reading "Learning from Henri Poincaré"

019 Dancing around outputs and outcomes Nov 13, 2009

Show notes

Did you ever wonder why your presentation, which looked and sounded awfully good, had little impact on your audience? The answer is found in this podcast… It is a matter of being able to tell the difference between a research output and a research outcome. Learn more from our guest, Dr Leong Munkew, CTO of … Continue reading "019 Dancing around outputs and outcomes"

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

When The Scientist Presents

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected