CS Honors Presentations: What Your Talks Should Look Like


Here's some logistical info and tips for preparing your presentation:

- Plan for 9 minutes for your talk, followed by 10 minutes for questions and feedback.  The way to prepare a 9-minute talk is to start with a 30-minute talk and take the best third. 

- CSE 495 students also prepare talks. You may give slightly shorter talks. You should say that the results that you have already obtained, and what you hope to accomplish during CSE 496. 

- Plan to use your own laptop for the presentation.

Topics you should consider covering in your talk include
- What problem are you trying to solve?
- Why is this problem important?
- What are the challenges in solving this problem?
- How do/did you plan solve it?
- What progress have you made in solving it?

Make sure to say explicitly what you accomplished---what your results are. (This is actually harder than you might think so make double sure that you are stating your results explicitly. 

Other advice:

- Make sure you explain the problem and why it is important before diving into details. Often people try to dive into their solution before truly selling the problem. 
- Make sure to emphasize what are your results or anticipated results.
- Explain your contribution versus the prior state of the art.
- Organize your talk so that if you can only get through half of your talk in the time limit, you have covered the most important things.  Do this for all values of one half :-)

Thank you all for your research efforts, and I look forward to hearing about your projects at the presentations.

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EXPECTATIONS

You should make sure to discuss expectations with your advisor. For example, your advisor may want you to write up a final project, or he/she may be happy with a final-project presentation. He/she may want a report and a talk after CSE 495, or may be fine waiting until CSE 496. 

You already know my other expectations. In particular, (1) that you attend the session on how to give a talk and (2) that you give a presentation in May.

Contact me if you have any questions.