Patrick Winston on Speaking

Notes on Prof Patrick Wilson’s talk on “How to Speak”

Ability to communicate

“We are storytelling animals”

Students shouldn’t go out without the ability to communicate for success in life depends on

in that order

Quality of communication depends on

in that order: what matters most is what you know!

Rule on engagement
“Could you close that laptop please?” - humans have only one language processer.

Cycle around about the course of the talk
- 20% of the listeners may be fogged out at a given time. So repeating it in a cycle, 3 times can convey it to most of the audience
Build a Fence around your idea, so that people don’t assume it to be something else
Verbal Punctuation- to bring people back into the bus
- To bring prople who fogged out back into the loop, give an overview now an then (a status update of sorts)
Ask a Question
- Wait for 7 seconds for an answer
- question shouldn’t be too obvious - people will be embarrassed to answer
- question shouldn’t be too hard - nobody will have anything to say

Build up your personal repertoire by observing your favourite speakers

Blackboards and Chalk is the tool for informing/teaching/lecturing; slides are for exposing
- Writing has a graphic quality
- speed with which you write on the board is approx. how fast people can grasp
- the board acts as a targer
  - Hands in the pocket or back?
    - Big NO
    - Extraordinarily insulting in many cultures
    - “looks like you are concealing a weapon”
  - with the board, you have something to do with your hands, something to point at

They shouldn’t take attention away from the speaker
- Fewer words- when there’s too mush to read, “I wish you hadn’t talked much, it was very distracting”
De-clutter:
- Get rid of the logos
- Get rid of the titles
- Get rid of the bullets and dots
Laser pointers or any pointers for that matter take away attention and eye contact with the audience
- “You know what, we could all leave and he still wouldn’t know”
- Use arrows or marks in the slides instead of using a pointer
Speaker should be close to the slides

Preparing for Oral Exams
- Get friends who nothing about the topic to review
- “If you can’t make me cry, I won’t value as a friend anymore!”
- People who know what you’re talking about, like your faculty advisor hallucinated that there is stuff in the talk that actually isn’t

Showcase a vision
- problem that people care about
- your novel approach
Showcase that you’ve done stuff
- Listing the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve a solution to the above problem
- You don’t need to have done everything already
- “Here’s what needs to be done.”
- Enumerate your contributions
All in 5 minutes

“Your ideas are like your children, you don’t want them to go into the world in rags”
Let them get recognised fot their value
to get remembered,
- make sure you have a SYMBOL associated with your presentation
- a SLOGAN
- a SURPRISE
- a SALIENT IDEA
  - an idea that sticks out, not necessarily the most important
- the STORY of how you did it

FInal Slide: not to have
- Collaborators: Put that slide towards the beginning of the talk
- Questions: waste of real estate and opportunity to show who you are
- website: waste of opportunity, does nothing for you
- “THE END” :lol:
- Thank You: Did the people stay out of politeness?
Final Slide: to have
- Conclusions
- Contributions
Tell a joke! People are ready and receptive for a joke!
- That way people think they had fun the whole time
Salute the audience:
- Speak good about the audience.
- Tell what you want them to do, etc.