In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
I have my first conference presentation coming up with a dedicated commentator. Any tips for navigating the session will be very much appreciated! What is the general aim of a commentary? What do I say after the commentator finishes? What are some strategies for navigating the Q&A? (Do people like presenting papers? I've been regretting submitting this one for months!)
Congrats to the OP, and great questions! I'm curious to hear how other readers answer, but here are some quick thoughts:
- Any general tips?: If at all possible, don't read your paper. Instead, either present from a couple-page handout or from a PowerPoint (though if you plan for the latter, make sure the conference has A/V!). Also, try to get your commentary in advance from your commentator--at a minimum, a few days in advance and ideally a week or two before that so that you have time to think through a good response. Then, if at all possible, write out your response, at least in bullet-points. It's generally a good idea to practice your talk so that you see what works and to ensure that your talk fits properly into your allotted time. Also, try to speak fairly slowly and deliberately. Finally, be sure to present the version of the paper that your commentator received. It is extremely bad form to 'revise' your paper and present a different version after they have read the version you submitted.
What is the general aim of a commentary?: This really depends on the commentator. Some commentators are relatively constructive, motivating a few critical questions for the speaker to answer. Alas, other commentators can be more aggressive, trying to raise a devastating objection or two.
What to say after the commentator finishes?: I always try to be gracious and thank the commentator. But after thanking them, just try to respond to whatever questions or objections they had the best that you can! If your commentator was aggressive in their commentary, try not to respond in kind--as needlessly adversarial talks and commentaries can be uncomfortable to sit through and potentially reflect poorly on the participants, particularly if the rhetoric gets a bit hot.
What are some strategies for navigating the Q&A?: Write down the questions you field on a note-pad. This will help you keep the question in mind as you answer, but more importantly give you some time to think through your answer before replying. Generally speaking, I've found it beneficial not to rush--that is, not to respond to a question immediately, blurting out whatever first comes to mind. When you receive a question, particularly a difficult one, you can always pause for a bit to collect and formulate your thoughts. Finally, if you don't feel like you have a particularly good answer to a question, you can always say something like, "That's a really good question. I'll need to think about it some more." You don't want to do this too much, as it signifies to your audience that you don't think you have a good answer to the question--but still, it's a known strategy that people use from time to time. It can be surprisingly hard to think up good answers to audience questions on the fly, as in my experience you can experience a bit of a 'deer in the headlights' effect as a speaker (i.e. the pressure of being in front of an audience can interfere with your ability to focus). Sometimes, you'll only be able to think through a good answer to a question after your talk. Such is life--though one thing that I've done on occasion is come back to and answer an earlier question if it occurs to me later.
Do people like presenting papers?: For the most part, I do! It sort of depends on the paper, as some papers are more difficult to present than others--and sometimes I do regret submitting a particular paper, if for example I later decide that I'm not terribly happy with it.
But these are just my answers. What are yours? Do you have any tips that a first-time conference presenter might find helpful?
Especially if you are being critical, give your comments to the presenter in advance.
Posted by: Karl | 07/07/2021 at 09:49 AM
In the immortal words of Mike Rowe, focus on *what* you’re doing, not *how* you’re doing.
Posted by: Corey Maley | 07/07/2021 at 01:03 PM
Three things:
I don't use powerpoint but I do use handouts and, in my experience, the vast majority of questions in the Q&A will concern something that's on the handout. (I imagine that's because audience members get the handout at the start and so have time during your talk to linger on particular claims in it and come up with a question or two.) This means that you can view creating the handout as also a way to guide the audience towards certain sorts of questions and away from others.
Don't take more than a few minutes to respond to the commentator, as that will eat into time for the Q&A. You can give some preliminary responses to the commentator's questions or objections but then say that you're happy to go into more detail during the Q&A if audience members ask you to do so. Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't.
I think it can be helpful to think of yourself, during the Q&A, as giving a kind of performance: even if you're actually very nervous, feeling defensive at a hostile question, or whatever, you're performing being affable, intellectually curious, excited to engage with the audience, confident, etc. (Indeed, if you perform being this kind of philosopher when responding to the commentator, you're able to set a certain kind of tone for the Q&A and, I think, lessen the chances of overly aggressive questions.)
Posted by: DK | 07/07/2021 at 02:27 PM
Speaking as an attendee of talks, I just want to second: *please* do not merely read a paper outloud. Any talk I've ever attended that was delivered this way, I had lost the speaker's train within about 90 seconds.
Posted by: Guy | 07/07/2021 at 03:39 PM
In partial defense of reading: Although most attendees prefer a PowerPoint/handout as opposed to reading from a paper, be sure that you can actually give a presentation without the aid of a written paper before committing to doing so. Personally, most of the lousy talks I've seen were ones where the speaker never got into the details of their arguments, presumably because they weren't prepared enough to carefully state their arguments without having those arguments written down. Those talks had the feel of 'here are some big ideas about this' and not like an actual philosophy talk. And of course, putting long texts verbatim into a visual presentation is also unacceptable. So: talk through visual aids and/or a handout if you wish, but not at the expense of content.
Posted by: Greg Stoutenburg | 07/08/2021 at 09:01 AM
One quick Q&A tip: If your session has a chair, have a conversation with them before the session begins and ask them to be in charge of fielding questions and managing the queue for the Q&A. It's too much cognitive load to be keeping track of hands and thinking philosophically at the same time!
Posted by: Mike Titelbaum | 07/08/2021 at 02:43 PM
There's a world of difference between reading out loud a paper that was written to be read by the listener (e.g. like a journal article) and reading out loud a paper that was *written specifically to be read out loud*. I think there's a lot to be said for the latter. The danger of speaking from notes is that you will add stuff on the fly and then run out of time. Crafting a really nice written presentation -- and then sticking to it -- avoids that danger.
Posted by: Dan Groll | 07/09/2021 at 05:43 PM
If you can, practice your presentation in less formal environments first-- a group of friends/ colleagues, a workshopping group, etc. You might get some useful feedback or a sense of the questions you'll field, and you'll get more comfortable delivering the talk itself. This helped me a ton when I was starting out.
Sometimes, you can drop in something during the talk that invites a certain line of questioning/commentary-- you can even say "we can talk more about this in the Q&A"-- and that can steer the conversation in a direction that may be more helpful and for which you'll be more prepared.
For what it's worth, I'm mid career and have never loved giving talks in general, although I've had mostly good experiences. Since I'm tenured at a school where most of my job is teaching and service, I don't feel pressure about presenting-- I've enjoyed the freedom to apply to conferences mainly on the basis of whether it will be a good experience for me, not on whether it's prestigious enough or whatever. Indeed, I've felt free to take a break from presenting altogether and focus on writing instead. I know not everyone has that freedom (I am very fortunate to be where I am) but I thought it might be helpful to know that in many jobs, you can thrive without being a fancy-conference rockstar.
Posted by: Ornaith | 07/12/2021 at 06:17 PM