 Now, what we will do is we will make a list of some of the things that we will go through the list that I have prepared which one must take care of during conference presentations and then see whether there is anything that you had left out. So, a talk should be audible, visible, lucid and interesting. So, shall we say it was audible at least to this particular audience right it was audible and things were visible I mean the font size visibility includes this important thing lucid what would you say about whether the talk was lucid or not as here we have different backgrounds if it is something background is given to then it is easily understandable to others. Good point the introduction of the subject that is where perhaps you could have done little bit better because this audience is mixed that is where the audience should be born in mind. So, I think if you would have done the same talk to set of students of working in your area I think it is fine, but when you have a mixed audience which will happen in conferences also because it may not be as mixed as this where you have people from different departments but still they will be working on different problems. So, you can work on the introduction a little bit more you can introduce a topic in a way in which it appears of interest to everyone how do you think for instance we could have done that in this talk anyone wants anyone has some suggestions. He could have explained the working of a MOSFET and the IDVG curve which he was referencing by using the lookup table. So, initially if we know how whether how the curve is obtained and how the lookup table helps in getting the required result that we want so that would have been better. So one of the suggestions is that he could have begun by let us look at his slides. So we could have had an introduction to the operation of the MOS transistor. Now if you examine this suggestion critically what I think is the title of the talk is interpolation schemes in lookup table. The MOSFET is only an example that is being considered I wonder whether you could have avoided the MOSFET all together do you think the MOSFET could have been avoided so that people would not have got you know prejudice that you know it is you are going to discuss something about the MOSFET and I do not understand the MOSFET so I get switched off. Because the talk is about interpolation schemes not necessarily of the MOSFET for the MOSFET at least the MOSFET does not appear in the title. So because interpolation schemes for lookup table can be general for any lookup table any set of data you can have so that is one suggestion that you know I could make that if you can think of avoiding the MOSFET for a mixed audience like this then you would focus on your central idea little bit better. If you look at that slides you make that transistor as a that outliner and he is talking about MOSFET it might click that PJT and fate also is come in the picture so directly if we if we if we going to the MOSFET then the title should be MOSFET related not the transistor only. Yeah that is something you are saying in a different way than what I said. While presentation he was making an eye contact with only you and some people around you he has never never seen over here any people so that is one problem. Yeah so and he was little bit fast. So speed of speaking one can reduce and better eye contact which you can develop by experience. So the reason why it looked that badly biased looking at that side because the computer was there so yeah so this is how you can see. Yes so this gives you gives you an idea of how the arrangement present can you know have an impact on the way you your posture so this is very important. So what I would suggest is that whenever you know you have to make a talk give a talk you please go to the place and one day in advance if possible or at least several hours in advance and familiarize yourself with the you know various arrangements and if you can give a mock kind of thing to yourself you can stand and then do it or if you have your few friends of yours then this kind of teething problems can be avoided. Unfortunately different places have different arrangements okay so it is good to familiarize yourself with the arrangements right it improves the impact of your presentation. The point is those 20 minutes or half an hour which you get you can make immense impact. This is something that you must appreciate okay if you make a good presentation you will remember okay so it is a great opportunity for you. So to repeat again you go to the place several hours in advance and familiarize yourself with the location of the various things over there. So lucid interesting we have pointed out that introduction is a very important element of the talk if you can introduce a topic well you know you can make it interesting. So one must work on the introduction okay in any talk. Let us move further interest depends on contents so what can be contents of a talk facts concepts principles and procedures they are the four types of things one can have generally the suggestion is avoid too many facts because people have difficulty you know grasping too many facts too much data and so on. One can use concepts and principles they are very interesting because concepts and principles are ideas procedures are also okay but again do not discuss all details of you know procedure unless the procedure itself is your central contribution. If you have developed a new procedure of doing something or you are talking about a new procedure then it is alright to you know use I mean focus on that otherwise facts and procedures are kept to a minimum are best kept to a minimum and concepts and principles are given importance okay then the talk is interesting. I contact someone has already pointed out variety interaction this is a short talk so I think we can avoid this particular issue of interaction during that 10 minutes or 15 minutes how many slides you had let us look at the number of slides a fine a total number of slides was 14 so that is okay normally the solution is you should have on average one slide per minute not that you must change slides every minute the if you want to find calculate the total number of slides you should have right it should be around one slide per minute average of that when you restrict your number of slides automatically you will develop length on one slide okay if you flip slides too often what happens is it is like something you know it is like a film being played at a very rapid pace so one cannot gather anything from there so but I think 14 is okay it's not too bad coming back to the variety activity diagrams your slide had diagrams audio visuals is not an issue here pace of speech someone pointed out that it was fast particularly since we are talking about international context in general outside India you must speak much more slowly than we do in India okay this is very important there is a nice quote for good oral communication you think fast but speak slowly you think fast but speak slowly it takes a little while to you know get adjusted to this normally we speak fast when we think fast our speaking is you know connected to thinking now I mean unless you make special effort so teacher acquire the skill of speaking slowly because you have taught for a number of years okay it takes a while to dealing the pace of speech and the speed of thought so this something one must practice pitch of the voice to some extent I think your pitch was it was alright but you know you could have had more variations it tended to be a little bit monotonous length of sentences fine pauses you could have given pauses between the sentences there I think there was scope of for improvement repetition did you use repetition to emphasize some idea of yours I think you didn't right if there are a few points that you wanted to emphasize during a talk you did have a conclusion okay so your talk had the your outline was perfect of the talk it had the various elements as they should be it had an introduction it had a conclusion and so on but within the talk one can repeat a few points okay that helps people to gather right what is central in your talk gesturing with hands one of your hands was tied because you are using the mic so but still other hand perhaps you did use the hand to point now this is one of the things that happens now this kind of pointing it really doesn't help okay in conferences so we need to understand this that requires some practice because you see a pointing like this you really don't know what you are pointing only you know others don't know it's something far away right it is like a mother showing the moon to the child right is something like that so you have to use a pointer if there is no pointer then you must get used to using the mouse and point so one must avoid using the hand without a pointer or a mouse also like you tended to use the hand many times what happens is people have a pointer but they don't use the pointer to point they simply use the pointer and you know use it like a hand it doesn't help then another problem is sometimes people do use the pointer properly in the sense they press the button and then but they keep the pointer on for too long a time on the slide meaning as you are reading the slide they will move the pointer right as an underline now that is not what is expected a pointer should not be used like that then it loses significance it is only supposed to be used to point to some part of the slide okay for some specific duration it should not be on all the time right it is not like moving your finger under the line when you read so this is why weakness with many people have so some of the must planning so planning includes going to the place where you want to give the talk and looking at the arrangements right this I have said already rehearsal title slide with author details you had short and catchy title you think the title could have been catchy a more catchy I don't know is there anyway title could have been catchy that is one can spend some time on this title and introduction and summary and conclusion that you had audience background and size so like people have pointed out perhaps you should have taken into account the fact that it has a mixed background duration shorter talks are more difficult I think about your number of slides and so on where okay location close to the audience not behind a desk all to one side of the screen it is strongly advised that sometimes you have this podium okay interestingly speaking from behind a podium is not supposed to be the most effective way of speaking though people do stand behind the desk of a podium okay they and sometimes they keep their hands on but if it is possible to leave the podium and stand in front of people right with your entire body facing it has more impact when you stand behind a podium only your kind of upper torso and the head is seen and it should not be to one side of the screen as far as possible towards the center speech should be slow and varied this point has been discussed slides lettering at least 24 point this 24 point font is a minimum that you need to have for any lettering so title should be bigger than the text that is always there but the point is you should not try to put more text by reducing the font size is not good so automatically once this font size is fixed amount of text also gets you know fixed it will not be too much then one should use aerial font okay in general they advise is that when the font size is large 24 is considered a large font size you must use a sans serif font sans serif means a font which does not have corners times new roman is a font which has corners for example so letter i can be like this or it can be like this now in this case you have corners which are protruding out okay so this particular example there are no corners so this kind of font is referred to as sans serif that is without serif serif implies the corners these is a serif font now times you roman is a serif font serif type font aerial is a non sans serif type font so for powerpoint presentations and so on it should be sans serif aesthetically it is more pleasing and also it is easier to read but for small size fonts your advice to use serif fonts times new roman what is a small size set 12 and less is a small size font size 12 and less color use only few colors so you have used only two colors blue and black that's good don't try to use too many colors your advice against using too many colors text short sentences no running text I think more or less your text was short let us see whether any sentences could have been made shorter because you need not be it did not contain all the words right let's look at this slide for example can be reduced the number of words normally one has base level physics model and many fitting parameters to account for the effects and get better accuracy these are what are known as compact models so perhaps one way of writing this point let us look at it right but how we can improve it by reducing the text that's a point here perhaps one could write right next to this particular pointer you can put compact models right as a word and a colon because that is what you are discussing here and then one can say that one can write it as base level physics model plus fitting parameters accounting for secondary effects right that's it and then you write the equation so this way one can reduce the text it is not necessary to have the sentence to be grammatically you know all elements to be present that's a point here so which is what you have done for example here you have said basically a switch right you could have said the MOSFET is basically a switch but you didn't do that because already a diagram of the MOSFET is there so it is understood so one can see whether other places the text can be reduced so number of slides one per minute excluding backup now this is the suggestion now supposing you feel that it is good to have a few more slides because people may have some questions so you can keep them after the slides corresponding to your talk right you have some additional slides they may or may not be used they are called backup slides references on the slide under discussion rather than at the end this has been pointed out already a logical transition while changing from one issue to the next can be done by posing a question you can see whether your talk would have been made more interesting by posing question when you make a transition from one idea to other so you can describe the situation and say now how do you think we can do it and then you come to the point instead of saying this can be done as follows right that is what is meant by posing question and making a transition from one then anticipate questions the audience may have and address them in the talk before the audience thinks of these things themselves so this is a part of planning when a question is asked during a talk answer immediately if it will clarify ambiguity else postpone it till the end so it is a good point good practice to answer the question then and there if it is possible but it should be a short answer it should not be a lengthy answer then what happens is the audience loses track from where you started if you cannot answer a question say no say you say that you know I don't have an answer but you don't try to beat around the bush avoid long answers use pointers sparingly this I have already pointed out how the pointer should not be there all the time on the slide do not wear dark or dull clothing so I think there are just a couple of slides about oral communication which we will go through and then end for the day the art of listening it is found that good communicators are also good listeners and vice versa those who are not good listeners are not good communicators okay so listening and communication research has established a link between them so how can you be a good listener a good listener make so good listeners make good communicators don't assume that you know what someone is going to say to you a good listener is one who doesn't assume beforehand sometimes there is a tendency on the part of people to show that you know I'm smart I mean you don't have to tell me everything right I know what you want to say right this kind of attitude sometimes people have so they don't wait for the other person to talk right I mean even before you talk okay I know this what do you mean it's not good you let the other person you know talk unless of course he's going on at length and so on ask questions if you do not understand restate and rephrase what has been said to you before responding this is also a good practice you can rephrase the question in conferences and in fact you should use it after a person has completed his question then you rephrase it in a short form and then you answer it listen to the tone volume and emphasis before interpreting the message what are the prescriptions for improving communication skills read allowed a newspaper for 10 minutes every day this is like singers who practice daily singing okay so it is not necessary to have anyone around you can just do it to yourself record and listen to your own talk practice in front of a mirror for example posture and so on you can improve a lot if you practice speaking in front of mirror people have used all these techniques to improve their communication skills so some websites are suggested here which discuss about how you can go about improving your oral communication so read books on public speaking and finally very very important listen to orators and good teachers now all of us have gone through several courses in which we have heard good teachers but when we start teaching ourselves or communicating immediately we do not become good communicators even though we have heard teachers who are good the reason is unless you make a special effort to concentrate on the way a person is communicating okay you cannot learn the elements of communication skills when you are when we were learning subjects as students we didn't bother so much on how the person was communicating we are more interested in understanding what was being taught and because a person communicated well if a person communicated well we understood the thing better we said he is a good communicator so we only understood the subject but not the method of communication so what one must do is one must listen to good teachers not from the point of view of understanding the subject but learning how to communicate so this is very important so you see you know where does a person pause what kind of sentences the person uses how he or she varies the length of sentences and so on all these things you must concentrate on not the understanding of the subject then you will learn the communication better