Presentation exercise
DAT315 The
Computer Scientist in Society
By now, you
should have chosen a paper to focus on, studied it carefully, and read one or
more of the preceding papers and ones that build on your chosen paper. The next
step is to prepare, and give, a short presentation about this paper and its
context.
Before you start
Before
starting to prepare your own presentation, you should:
·
Watch Simon Peyton Jones’ talk on How
to give a great research talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT_-owjKIbA
·
Read through Derek Dreyer’s slides on How
to give talks that people can follow. https://people.mpi-sws.org/~dreyer/talks/talk-plmw17popl.pdf
You’ll notice the advice is not entirely consistent—you will have to decide
for yourself whose advice to follow!
If you read Swedish, I can heartily recommend Praktisk Retorik by Göran
Hägg. This isn’t particularly focussed
on technical presentations—but it is both hugely enjoyable to read, and hugely
influential on all presentations you will make afterwards! The paperback is out
of print, but it is available as an inexpensive e-book.
Your
presentation
Prepare a fifteen minute
presentation to explain the key idea of the paper you have chosen. Make sure
you include in your talk a brief discussion of the papers that came before and
after the one you are presenting, to set it in context. Your presentation
should be aimed at an audience of your peers—your fellow students on the
Masters programme. You will be giving your
presentation to a small group, but you should prepare slides suitable for a large
room—i.e. without too much information on each slide, and using fonts larger
than the default (in Powerpoint, use a minimum font size of 20 point,
preferably 24 point). The first slide of your presentation should include the
title of the paper you are presenting, your name, your email address, and the
room and time slot you have booked to give your talk (see below). The last
slide of your presentation should include references to all of the papers you
refer to in the talk. (This last slide is just for reference—you don’t have to
present it, and the font size doesn’t matter).
Fifteen
minutes is quite a short time to present a paper in—you will need to be
ruthless in deciding what to include and what to exclude. Make sure you practice your talk with a stopwatch, so
you can be certain you can give it within the time limit.
Your slides
should be prepared as either a Powerpoint
presentation, or as a PDF that can be displayed full-screen.
Don’t
forget to book a presentation slot (see below)!
Giving your presentation
You are
expected to give your presentation to a small group of fellow students and a
teaching assistant. Each presentation will be part of a two-hour session
consisting of up to five presentations. You are expected to attend the entire
session that your presentation is a part of (and you are welcome to attend
other sessions). As well as the other students in your session, you will be
giving your presentation to one of the course assistants, who will give you
feedback on your presentation at the end of your talk.
Two hours
is quite a short time for five presentations, so we will start promptly (on the
hour in the morning, quarter past the hour in the afternoon), and there will be
no break in the middle. Also, to avoid wasting time connecting laptops to the
projectors, all the talks will be
projected from the course assistant’s laptop. The course assistants will gather
the presentations in advance, so that we can move quickly and smoothly from one
to the next.
You will
need to book a presentation slot using
one of the Doodles below. There is a separate Doodle for each course assistant.
Note that sessions are limited to
five presentations, so book your slot early if you need a choice of times.
|
Inari Listenmaa |
|
|
Jonatan Kilhamn |
|
|
Simon Robillard |
The
available slots are:
|
Date |
Course assistant and room |
Time slots |
|
Thursday, 16 Nov |
Inari Listenmaa 5213 |
10–12, 13–15, 15–17 |
|
Monday, 20 Nov |
Jonatan Kilhamn 5215 |
8–10, 10–12 |
|
|
Simon Robillard 5213 |
8-10, 10-12, 15-17 |
|
Tuesday, 21 Nov |
Inari Listenmaa 5213 |
8–10, 10–12, 13–15 |
|
|
Jonatan Kilhamn 5215 |
8–10, 10–12, 13–15 |
Submission
Submit your
presentation through the Fire system, here: https://css-lp2-17.frs.cse.chalmers.se/. The deadline is midnight on November 15th, no matter
when your presentation slot is. When you submit your presentation, you must
select a “reviewer”; make sure you choose the course assistant who will be
running the presentation session you have booked!