 Let me just say a few words about my colleague, Professor, well, his initials are R. B. Snotch. I just learned that these initials stand for Raghavan Bhuvanendra Snotch. He is a scientist of great repute. He did his MSc from University of Kerala and went to Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore to do his PhD, which he finished in 2001. He did his postdoctoral work at Ohio State University in California. He was there, I think, for a few years. In 2003, he came to us. Relative to us oldies, he has been here only for a short while, but he already became an associate professor in 2007 and this year he has become a full professor. It is a remarkable achievement going by the tough evaluation processes that we have at IIT Bombay. Why I say this is to tell you that he is an exceptional researcher which is being recognized by the institute. What I would like to add is he is also an exceptional teacher. Like many of your institutes would be doing at IIT Bombay, it is routine that at the end of every course that I offer, every subject that I teach, students give a feedback and that feedback is made known to the teacher only after teacher has announced the grades for the subject. That feedback usually tells us how effective our teaching was and what are the points that we would like to take care for the next teaching and so on. Professor Sunoj is one person who has regularly without exception received exceptionally excellent feedback from his students. So, he is also an excellent teacher. In fact, if you asked me, he is more of a passionate teacher and less of a passionate researcher if I may say so. Of course, he is a great researcher is well known. So, I am extremely happy and I am thankful to him for having agreed to come and share his thoughts to present to you something on presentation. So, Professor Sunoj welcome and thank you for agreeing to do this over to you. At the very outset, let me place on record my thanks to Professor Patik. First for initiating this wonderful activity nationwide and second for inviting me to talk to large number of virtual colleagues of mine in different remote centers of this great nation. And I also thank Professor Patik for an exceptionally longer introduction and as with any other human being one would be very pleased to hear good things being talked about you on a national platform. I am happy to hear that my teaching has been well received by the students of this institution and I will try to hope to live up to their expectations in the coming years as well. So, today I am going to speak to you some very interesting points very important details of how to make a scientific presentation. There are many secrets you can read from the title secrets of real life learning process and I am a person who would like to share the experience which I have had in the past without anything hidden very straight forward as to what was my experience and I will share some of those including some actions. So, what I put together in this presentation is based on my own experience that is why I call it secrets of real life learning process. So, let me begin the presentation by starting with a disclaimer it is a very unusual disclaimer. So, I will have several characters which appear in my slides and I will have several characters which you know goes into me and I will start acting like those characters during the presentation. So, these characters are presented or enacted characters in this talk are so real that if you think that it coincides with your behavior you as a speaker let me tell you that it is with purpose and I can only say sorry at the end of the talk if you wish me to do so otherwise you know take it lightly outline of this talk and you would see that in almost every presentation in the world including that of mine. So, there is an outline this is a very important starting point for scientific presentation and before I go into the contents of this presentation as you can see that it is blog there are several blocks four blocks of presentation before I go into the details of that I must first tell you why would you be a good speaker and I am not referring to being able to speak well in terms of the language skills that I will come to that as I continue, but when I say being able to present well that means that you have a story that you want to tell you have a story that you have written you have created you are the contributor and you want to convey that with a large number of people it could be a classroom it could be a seminar hall it could be a you know small little group meeting with many of your friends around or it could be a large huge international platform where about 600 people are listening to you from around the world. The starting point is being able to have a right attitude that giving a presentation is a skill that one should have whether you continue as a teacher continue as a scientist and perhaps even continue as a salesperson or in a corporate environment for example you have developed something you have a story and you want to convince your general manager CEOs and so on and so forth how will you do that you have a nice great story you know small little story which is very good, but unless you present that well the story loses its charm. So it is very important for people from different walks of life to be able to tell the story in a manner which is convincing tell the story which would be received by those who listen to you that is very very important. So it is not just about scientific presentation not just about doing research and presenting your research papers it is omnipresent being able to present well is a skill set that is required in modern day life. Let me also add a few notes about globalization all of you have heard this keyword globalization and most of us keep hearing that in the media keep hearing that in newspaper what is this globalization which simply implies that if a person is trained in one of the institutions in this country the person should be good anywhere in the world that is a way I look at it because we work in the so called technically so called service sector where we train people as teachers we train students and these students are supposed to be taking the leadership role of tomorrow and the students may be in this country he may be or she may be in any other country in the world, but the student is supposed to lead lead a center lead an initiative lead a business lead a teaching institution and in different roles it would appear that the power of globalization is such that if you are trained today in this country you should be as good as anywhere else and you should be in a position to tell your story any platform anywhere in the world you cannot be just locally good you have to be globally good that is a huge challenge that is a good aspect of being global that if you are trained you are trained on global platform and any platform that you go up and speak and tell your story you should be good so with that backdrop I am telling you that this is a very important skill set that one should have that being able to present being able to tell your story. So my story is going to be in four different blocks content creation preparation and practice and I plan to talk about only first two aspects today and remaining two delivery on stage performance improvement a continuous process I will postpone it for tomorrow's lecture so it actually it is a short lecture I am sort of stretching it out so that the contents are well received by the participants so let me start by content creation the very key to content creation is first to have the right attitude okay so when you were in college or when you are in college you are asked to give a presentation the first reaction would be that oh sir no that that fear factor that that takes over that kicks in very very quickly and very fast there the attitude is incorrect so you need to be able to develop the right attitude and I have borrowed some quotes from normal laureates and you know famous people the secret of joy in work is contained in one word that is excel so if you want to enjoy work you have to do it in a excellent fashion and now you have worked hard you have good results you want to tell a group of people maybe your examiners they are going to evaluate you and I will talk about the secrets of how these evaluations happen at a later stage to know how to do something well is to enjoy so today you are knowingly or unknowingly by listening to me you are taking a decision that okay I want to be a good presenter I would tell good stories I will sell my products so if you have taken that decision I think that is the right starting point before we get into the technical details of how to make a presentation so to know how to do something well is to enjoy so how do we enjoy it you know those who have gone to the west and those people drink lot of coffee and that is not the coffee with milk as we are used to in this country this coffee when you take it for first time it is so bitter and I do not want to use this or promote alcoholism but those who have taken beer they would realize that a beer was not a great drink when you took it for the first time and of course I do not I do not consume beer I am not promoting in that sense but many of my friends told that those who start taking beer they do not like it at the first place they take it for maybe for the company maybe for the people around but I do not think it is a great drink it is bitter but I should take more and more as much as you take coffee more and more you begin to develop a flavor and it tastes for it okay so that is what I am referring to here to do something well is to enjoy so you should have an attitude such that okay I like to present that is an attitude problem as supposed to know I do not like to present know I do not like to present should change to yes I want to present so in a last class teacher would ask can somebody summarize one of this technical aspect in tomorrow's class and most people what is attitude no no not me not me and they will turn around here turn around there so that teacher will not look at him instead you should have the attitude that okay if I take up I will read that well I would read much better than other people if I take up that assignment I will take it seriously that I will learn more things and I will also improve my presentation skill addressing the class so the attitude should be that can someone give a presentation tomorrow yes sir I will give that should be that so if you are one of those persons who will say yes sir I will do and that is what I want to promote that scientific presentation given a chance you should come forward come forward and say that I will do it because you are going to gain through that you are not going to lose anything you are going to gain through that you will become a better person okay on the lighter side a teacher gives a note to I am not sure whether you can read the slide because of the poor graphics there the teacher gives a fairly huge book for a small kid and says just think of it as if you are reading a long text message okay kids do not want to you know take huge books and read the everything but the kids are so smart these days to read the SMS read the text message the teacher is telling the kid that okay I am telling you something which you would enjoy based on your attitude attitude of kids is what they are happy reading SMS messages not really large long text books so think of the presentation as something that you like that's the old point of giving this small little cartoon just think of this book as if you are reading a long text message so let us go into the details of it after having a resume that you have started changing the attitude okay somebody is talking to me from IIT Bombay and he is telling that scientific presentation is great technical talks are great and you should have the ability because of all the different reasons like globalization being able to sell your products so on and so forth okay I think I am willing to soften my attitude from a bit no no I don't want to present to okay let me try because somebody is speaking to me that okay it's good so let me try with that attitude let me move forward how do you create the content this can be in different different context that you are supposed to give a talk now I am assuming that you are a researcher somewhere or you are a teacher somewhere and I will have some slides directly pertaining to teachers you're asked to give a presentation to a large class and I was fortunate to teach you know class of the order of close to 400 students a class of the order of just 10 students class of the order of 40 students avoid spectrum of number of students in the class so when you are asked to give a new topic or a new new course for example how do you create the content it's a very important starting point this is after having assumed that you enjoy doing presentation so your attitude is already said right that you are going to enjoy doing a presentation so let us worry about how to create the content this is most important first is to understand the topic well understand the topic very well so I will I will come back to this point you know sometimes I am I am stressing certain words and I am missing certain words and re re reading the statement and stressing some other word so I said understand the topic well then I said again understand the topic very well and very has a modulation I will come back to these points later okay so understand the topic very well that's important and then you would say that okay what do you mean by very well I do not really understand the topic at the first place then how will I understand very well so you need to spend a fair amount of time for example when I started teaching just for 1 hour of lecture minimum reading was somewhere between 6 to 8 hours for just 1 hour of lecture it was almost like 8 to 10 times more than the time that one is supposed to spend in the class that is when you teach a new topic for the first time okay so it takes enormous effort to be able to be confident on what you are going to speak to take that aspect very seriously that you will understand the try to understand the topic as best as you can and if you are not able to make sure that in and around whatever resources are available compared to the times when I was growing up in my college there were no internet no email no Facebook but it was only library and I was fortunate to have three libraries in and around my college so I used to be a regular visitor to the library and issued as many books as possible and read the selected topics from different books the presentation would be different but you get new knowledge every day that you read new books and tomorrow you are going to give a talk based on that same topic more you read you are going to be comfortable with that so understand the topic because that forms the basis of your confidence and many of you among the audience throughout this country many of you may be thinking about the fear factor okay I am supposed to give a talk to thousand people tomorrow how will I do that where is this lack of confidence coming from lack of confidence has its root in not being able to understand the topic well or you were not able to spend enough time trying to understand what topic you are going to speak on so once you understand the topic let it be just one slide you are asked to speak about some topic just in one slide you are not authorized to use any more slides just one slide and you can imagine how much content you can put in just one slide and if you are not sure about the content then it doesn't serve the purpose so you need to be able to know what is the content of that slide and each slide in a presentation so that forms the confidence when you have confidence all the nervousness all the fear factor would slowly melt down it's going to melt it's natural that you are going to be more and more confident if you are confident about the topic that you have it or the slide that you have have in your hand so be very sure about the content poor are the content lower the confidence and that anyone of you will agree anyone of you will readily agree with me if you are put together some slides which you are not sure and you can't go up the stage and said that for my friend made it I didn't have the time to look through that you don't want to take such risk right because I will talk talk about the problems if you don't pay enough attention then there are many problems which I will try to stress now the initial part of creating a new presentation you should start thinking about what is to be included wonderful graphics great videos fancy colors no these are not the considerations the real content okay if the real content is what you should worry about what is to be included selection should be based on where you can convince the audience on your story therefore the first foremost thing is to decide what is to be included and there the consideration such as okay this picture is so nice let me include in my slide because people will say wow great picture a great presentation is not made by great graphics so keep in mind that the content what you will include what will be stressed not everything you can stress in a presentation because usually it is time constrained 30 minutes talk 15 minutes talk hey you have only 10 minutes and the student will have about 40 slides will you do that so not all slides can be stressed and not every region of a single slides can be stressed but you should have a clarity in your mind that okay this is a slide there the key point is this so you will stress that point okay so stress is important and there are few slides which are to be flashed what do I mean by flashing just change the slide make its presence just for a few seconds and the next slide will come but what is the purpose of having certain slides with few seconds appearance on the screen is because that slide is okay it's good it's good to convey certain other points but not very relevant to the presentation I will tell you just a situation example suppose I have done lot of work and my audience listening to me do not know the technical rigor of the work that is going to be presented if that is the case you will distract by giving too much technical details to the audience instead what you should say there but at the same time there will be one or two people in the audience who would understand the technical rigor so you have to tell them that okay I have done lot of this the key points come in the next slide I have done lot of these things at that slide is to be flashed because if you go into the details of lot of these things you know half the audience will begin to sleep and I will show way how you can make the audience sleep I will show how to do that that is also part of this scientific presentation and now know your audience never ever underestimate your audience if I assume that oh I am a professor at IIT Bombay great institution and somebody from the corner of a remote center will get up and ask sir you told this which is wrong oh really and there the attitude of you as a speaker cannot be that oh that little student ask me this question he is wrong I am right because I am a professor you can't have such attitude which is incorrect wrong teachers speakers on stage are always there is a likelihood there is a possibility that speakers and teachers on stage or everybody on stage can be intimidated and fortunately we don't have to fear about you know Chappals being thrown at us that is very very rare possibility but it is more humiliating than a chapel thrown at a minister or ministers many events these days and it's very frequent now so it is more humiliating for a teacher that you are not able to answer a question which is a good question instead you use your power to say that no that's incorrect question you know that you are wrong please do not underestimate the audience you never know what kind of questions can come from which corner of the of the hall which corner of the room be prepared and this should not affect your confidence I will come to this point again the confidence I said it depends on how well you understood the topic and you can't you can't make a presentation living in fear that oh somebody in that corner sir said that he will ask a question he may be sleeping you don't worry about it so you can't you can't give a presentation fearing that somebody is going to ask a question but what I am saying is that do not underestimate your audience audience are important okay very important and you should respect the audience and take the questions based on their merit so a good assessment and this is something good assessment of to whom you are talking to is a great great bonus for those who go to give scientific talks in conferences and usually what happens is that you know you go to a international conference and first row you will have like great names Nobel laureates sitting and you know if Nobel laureates are sitting it's their chair let them sit there it's my story let me tell if Nobel laureates are sitting what's your problem doesn't matter who is a Nobel laureate it's your time you perform it's your story you tell it doesn't matter who is watching you okay so now but you can't say that Nobel laureate I don't care Nobel laureate you can't have that attitude you need to have a balanced attitude okay Nobel laureate or if you spend 10 minutes you know wishing them what will happen no point so you need to tell your story right so never underestimate the audience and have a good assessment what do I mean by good assessment good assessment implies that you have already seen many people who are experts in the domain so they may want to know some extra detail and give them some extra detail as in when you have certain slides which will talk about the rigor of your work and that is why the underestimation of audience if you know the audience you can present better okay if you are in a classroom you know the ability of students to whom you are talking to you can perhaps teach better and if you teach like really high five above the head in students use this language right it went above the head it was Greek and Latin do you want to give such a talk as a teacher in a classroom no you don't want to right you don't want to because you want to spend your time effectively such that the students also get some benefit out of you talking to them so if you come up with like very complicated expressions and you know put that on a slide and say that oh you're not down I will take rest for next 10 minutes it would not serve the purpose so you should know the audience if you know the audience it's better and many instances you don't know the audience and because you know I will go to a national conference and lot of people are sitting in the audience I do not know not more than five people out of 400 people what do I do there I should assume that I am speaking to a general audience so you should simplify things further you'd simplify make little longer introduction tell that the story is very important this is a story people are not talked about before convince them that this story is very important once you convince them and audience will naturally listen to you they will follow what you are saying so have an assessment of the audience content creation continues order of slides that is flow that is flow when I say flow you should become little bit imaginative when I say the word flow what do you mean what what comes to your mind you just take take a few seconds and few seconds and think about what is it flow what is a flow is it a flow as as slow as the coltar can leaking no it's the dirty flow no I'm not interested when you talk about a flow to me it's it's a flow of a small little you know water flow small little cascade birds chirping imaginative be imaginative we have derived lots of inspiration from nature when you talk about a flow and if you want to talk about flow of a river where is it starting from think of those and if you if you want to present the story of a river how do you start should start from the mountains correct should start from the mountains you can't say that oh in the river there are 10 bridges and that's starting from nowhere so when you want to speak a story about a river you should start from the right place and you should end at the right place where do you end naturally it will end on a sea correct so this flow creation because you are you're sitting down now to decide what is to be included what is to be stressed what is to be flashed and what flow to be put in place so I'm talking about the flow so if you do you want to tell a story to the audience or you want me want to make them tell us make a story on you how do they make a story on you if I have given today a very hopeless presentation standing like a statue and murmuring a few words and presenting some very clumsy looking slides then everybody in the nation would talk about oh that guy from IIT Bombay he talked about something which I never got anything and I was just sleeping I enjoyed my sleep that is a story on you they have no idea about the story that you were trying to tell so keep in mind that if you don't give a good flow then they are going to make a story on you and people would imitate my my actions and that will be the you know center of attraction keep that in mind that order the appearance of slides in what order it will come flow is very important flow as much as this beautiful poem by Lord Tennyson and I don't want to read it for you you you can please go through it but I will try my level best to read I come from the haunts of Coot and Heron I make a sudden sally and sparkle out among the fern to bigger down a valley by 30 hills I hurry down or slip between the ridges by 20 thoughts a little town a half a hundred bridges till last by Phillips farm I flow to join the brimming river for men may come and men may go but I go on forever beautiful you look at the flow look at the flow I come from haunts of Coot and Heron it starts from where it is coming from in the mountains where these plants are plenty this these birds are plenty I make a sudden sally sparkle down sparkle out among the fern to bigger down a valley so from the mountain it came to a value you imagine the beautiful flow of a you know a water clear water river can you imagine that how beautiful it is so here you are talking about a flow and in that flow what are the key points I come from where I come from so where your story is beginning you have a research topic to present but who started it where it where it all started where is the original concept derived from that's a mountain okay and then bigger down a valley bigger down a value you have reached some kind of valley so that's a major stage in in in a reverse river river lifetime right starting and valley valley is the place all the poets will watch the river and all of us will watch the river we can't be in the mountains observing where the river had originated so bigger down a valley 30 hills I hurry down it's like fast look at the speed 30 hills I hurry down is so many kilometers all put in just one one line 30 hills I hurry down so poet is really accelerating his story over there I will come back to how do how do you accelerate your own topic the 30 hills I hurry down then in between lines I am not giving much importance half a hundred bridges it talks about civilization half a hundred bridges human creation correct and till now there were no human creation before in the poem 30 hills I hurry down all natural 30 hills you fast accelerated story goes fast there half a hundred bridges it talks about civilization man made bridges are man made so when I say 30 when I say half a hundred bridges it had gone through the gone through the towns and cities and major towns correct so the story has a flow it all started up there and when you know 30 30 hills are you hurry down lot of forest is already covered came to human inhabited places cities so you look at the flow you would enjoy it now till last by Philips farm I flow to join the brimming river you see the beautiful end where it started where it came from where it came through and then brimming river huge brimming river it emerged with the river it once in merge with the river you look at the joy of that little you know smaller river you know merging with the brimming river and the poet stops there he stops there with a very powerful statement very powerful line for men may come and men may go but I go on forever this is so inspirational the river will go on forever it doesn't matter how many hundred bridges it crossed doesn't matter whether it it hurried down 30 hills or not but this this this flow will go on it's inspirational poem in many sense okay now this is the story which I am I want to tell you that your story should have an origin your story should have a sequence script and all of you watch movies right and all of you watch cricket as well I presume that all of you watch cricket and in a cricket match Davy Shastri or Suley Gavaskar will first come to the pitch before the match starts extra innings or extra cover whatever they call these days and they come to the pitch first before the match had started they give a pitch report imagine in a t20 match the pitch report is given at the timeout phase it will be completely out of flow right so there is a sequence of event you are very much used to that at that very much whatever you are used to you should put in your scientific presentation you should put that in your into your classrooms that the flow is important you can't give a pitch report and start at the strategic timeout correct you can't do that so the flow is important