No time for blogging with impending grant deadline, small author proof crisis, and some associated drama. I hate lab/personnel drama.
Don’t desert me- I’ll be back- but I’ve got to take care of business. I’ll leave you temporarily with this… two more presentation pet peeves:
1. Deliver the presentation TO THE AUDIENCE, not to the board.
2. Don’t forget to tell them what you are going to tell them… in a little outline somewhere near the beginning of the talk.
Add your own if you wish…
Blue Lab Coats 
Please, for the sake of all humanity, stop trying to make witty or pun filled titles. they work maybe 5% of the time. MAYBE.
Just point the laser pointer at the goddamn figure of interest, why don’t you. Don’t whirl the thing around in the general direction of the slide at seemingly random intervals during the talk.
“Please, for the sake of all humanity, stop trying to make witty or pun filled titles. they work maybe 5% of the time. MAYBE.”
Generally agree. But it did disappoint me that nobody studying the whole ORAI/STIM thing had the gumption to exploit the obvious pun-age in the literature (“Can we stop TRP’n now and actually smoke this CRAC?”)
Several items:
1. Make sure your font can be read against your background. Yellow lettering on a white background, or dark blue on a black background IS NOT VISIBLE.
2. Serif font should be reserved for titles only. Serif font attracts the eye, causing one to spend more time reading it than san serif font. Unless you want people to read your slides and not pay attention to you, leave serif fonts for the title of your slide only.
3. Bullet points are not entire paragraphs. Bullet points are there to JOG YOUR MEMORY as to what you need to say/convey to your audience. It’s not there to be read by them.
4. Please, do not read your seminar slides word for word to the audience. They can read if they want, but they are there to listen to you speak to them about a topic. Images are worth a 1,000 words, and they help you better convey your ideas anyways.
5. Uhhhh, ahhhh, ummm and other time filling utterings are annoying. If you say “As you can see …” during every slide, it’s going to piss people off. OF COURSE THEY CAN SEE, you don’t need to say it 30 times in a talk. Uhh’s and umm’s are just as distracting. If you’re going to give a talk, when you switch to the next slide, take a deep breath, think of what you want to say (because you’ve already prompted yourself with your bullet points) and THEN AND ONLY THEN, launch into the discussion of that slide. This pause gives your brain time to catch up with your mouth.
Great suggestions all!
Never never never never.
NEVER. USE. COMIC. SANS.
Dr A- You obviously don’t work on yeast. I think the entire yeast field uses comic sans- it’s like something they teach their trainees when they are undergraduates. Just out of curiosity- why the objection to this particular font?? I kinda like it (gasp!).
You’re right, I don’t work on yeast.. sorry to offend the yeast scientists! I just think it should be used as it was intended – for speech balloons and actual comics! And, I am not alone!
http://bancomicsans.com/home.html
For the love of god, stay within the time limit.
Try to indicate within the discussion itself from time to time that you are quoting someone rather than using “air quotes” incessantly.