Too many audiences are passive. Try to arouse them.

Audiences are often passive. Typically they defer questions until the end of a one hour scientific presentation. By that time the questions have been forgotten, assuming the speaker has left any time.

Why such passivity? The desire to be polite? Fear of asking a question that reveals ignorance? They'd rather be doing their email?

In any event, passivity is a prescription for getting nothing from a talk. People don't learn effectively in a passive mode, especially when dozens of complicated slides are whizzing by. You as a speaker get nothing if there is no audience reaction. It's lose-lose. You might as well pass out your journal article and let them read that.

The solution? The speaker needs to "break the ice." Tell the audience they can ask questions as they occur, rather than wait until the end. Come with a set of questions that you will toss out to the audience. Give one of your friends advanced warning that you're going to call on him/her if nobody responds. Have another friend set the lower bar by asking a very basic question. Once the "ice is broken," there will be a lot more interaction.

An 11th commandment

RecentlyI posted a commentary on the Nature Jobs Blog. The commentary identified the 10 most significant presentation pitfalls, taking off from talk show host David Letterman's famous countdowns of the top 10 in a category. The post can be found at:

http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2016/02/10/a-david-letterman-like-countdown-to-the-10-biggest-pitfalls-in-scientific-presentations/#more-8957

Actually it was hard to limit the number of pitfalls to 10, so here is number 11:

Creating separate audio and visual narratives

Too often the speaker's words are not related to the visual on the screen. The audience doesn't know whether to listen to the speaker or try to read the slide.

Your job as speaker is to explain the slide. There should be a communication synergy between your oral narrative and the visual. Use the pointer to show the audience which particular part of the slide you are discussing. If there are elements of the slide you don't discuss, ask yourself why they are on the slide. Most of the time you can remove them, helping the audience focus on the key points.

A car is not an automobile (in a presentation)

One sure-fire way to lose the audience is to switch terminology in the middle of a presentation. You need to stick to one name for anything you are trying to represent. The USA is not the United States of America in a presentation unless you tell the audience it is.

You may want to invoke abbreviations after you introduce a concept. For example, suppose you want to use the term EMR for an Electronic Medical Record. The first time the concept appears on a slide it should look like the following: Electronic Medical Record (EMR). Now point to the words with your pointer and tell the audience that you will now be referring to Electronic Medical Records as EMRs. Anytime you switch nomenclature (which you should avoid as much as possible) tell the audience that you are doing that.

The same holds true for logos or any sort of visuals symbolizing a concept. Keep your terms and visuals as consistent as possible.