“How to Speak” from Patrick Winston on MIT OpenCourse

How to start:

• Empowerment promise

Ideas:

• Cycling
• Build fence
• Verbal punctuation
• Question

Time & Space: 11 AM (could be) and Well lit & Cased & Populated

Tools (e.g., Board):

• Graphic quality
• Speed properly
• Target
• Empathetic mirroring (why is the use of a blackboard so effective)

Slides:

• Do not read
• Be in the image
• Keep images simple
• Eliminate clutter
• Get rid of background junk
• Get rid of the words
• Get rid of thee logos and title (Simplification)

Otherwise, The audience would say “I wish you had not talked so much and it was distracting. “

Informing:

• Promise
• Inspiration
• How to think

Persuading: Situating and Practice

For job talks, in 5 mins we need to show that you have

• Vision: which is in part, a problem that somebody cares about and something new in your approach
• Done something: list the steps need to be done; we need to specify some behavior and enumerate the constrains that make it possible to deal with that behavior; enumerate your contributions

Get famous:

• Symbol
• Slogan
• Surprise
• Salient idea
• Story (how you did it; how it works; why it is important)

How to stop:

Recognize the collaborators on the first slide

No “for details …” “The end” “Thank you”

The final slide should be the contribution slide

End the talk without saying thank you

• It’s been great fun being here;
• It’s been fascinating to see what you folks are doing here at MIT
• I’ve been much stimulated and provoked by the questions you’ve been asking; it’s been really great, and I look forward to coming back on many occasions in the future