How to give a presentation and lose your audience in 5 seconds

I would rather get a root canal than sit through a conference where people just read their papers.  Honestly, who wants to have an academic paper read to them?  I can think of no better way to tell an audience you aren’t interested in respecting their time than to stand before them and read.

I thought this practice was rare until I attended the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting in Boston and a pre-conference for graduate students working on Turkey two weeks ago.  All but two of the approximately 15 presentations I saw over the weekend consisted of someone reading his or her paper.

To make matters worse, all the papers for the pre-conference had been distributed in advance, so it was like having the transcript of the State of the Union address in the afternoon but then choosing to sit through 164 standing ovations that evening to see how closely the president sticks to the script.  Potentially amusing, but mostly painful…and a huge waste of time.

Don’t get me wrong, I met some nice people at the conference and got helpful feedback on my own work from experts in the field.  I certainly learned a thing or two.  But why can’t people pull out take-away points, elaborate on them, give some juicy details, and then call it a day?  No one is likely to remember that ingenious turn of phrase you used on page 16, paragraph 3–you already lost 90% of your audience 10 minutes ago because people pay less attention when they know they can just get the paper from you later.

Again, I think this has something to do with respect for the audience, and Kathy Sierra put it very well in a post last October on how to start a presentation, book, or article…

Trying to establish credibility is backwards. Don’t try to get the reader to respect YOU… the reader wants to know that you respect HIM!

Demonstrate that respect by caring about his time. By caring about the quality of time. Your audience should know right up front that you’re grateful for the time they’re giving you, and you show that by being entertaining, engaging, compelling, interesting, or at least useful. You demonstrate it by assuming they’re smart. By recognizing what they already bring to the discussion. By not insulting their intelligence. By being prepared.

Preparing to give a presentation takes effort beyond tweaking your paper.  At the least it requires clarity about what you want people to remember when they leave the room.

Beyond that it requires a little empathy on your part.  In other words, present unto others as you would have them present unto you.  For my money that means never reading your paper to an audience.*

*I can think of three exceptions to the Don’t Read Your Paper Rule:

1. The language used at the conference is not your native language.
2. Your speech is going to be published at a later date (e.g., you’re giving an association’s presidential address)
3. Your writing is so eloquent and your voice so pleasant that your recitation borders on performance art.  (Props to Sam Wilson of Princeton for pulling this off at the pre-conference.)