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Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. My key advice is to gear the talk to the audience and context. A
by Rainymood 8y ago
Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.
My key advice is to gear the talk to the audience and context. A TED talk will have a completely different presentation style than an academic conference where people might be actually interested in the more nitty gritty details.
- crispyambulance 8y ago> Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. I see this a lot in talks and even in canned presentations and I don't recommend it. I think it comes from people padding their talks to fit within a certain time frame. Or perhaps, some speakers have realized that enough audience members utterly tune-out during the talk and need to be reminded of what the talk was about just as they're waking-up and getting ready for the next meeting. Somehow it got drilled into people that this is a necessary structure, but it is not! Much better, I think, to remove material from the talk to the point where the speaker is making one, maybe two interesting assertions that are supported succinctly. Every talk should leave time for discussion.
- blt 8y agoThis specific aphorism is given as advice by some well known MIT public speaking guy. I think people take it too literally and make an outline slide that's like "motivation, problem statement, method, experiments." So useful...