Also I personally dislike a lot of recommended styles and enjoy the weirdest, quirkiest, or sometimes generally-considered-boring talks. Different speakers, different talks, different rules. No need to be too strict about such things. We can allow ourselves to enjoy diversity here as well. - ThreadSky

devezer.bsky.social • 105 days ago

Also I personally dislike a lot of recommended styles and enjoy the weirdest, quirkiest, or sometimes generally-considered-boring talks. Different speakers, different talks, different rules. No need to be too strict about such things. We can allow ourselves to enjoy diversity here as well.

Comments

mehr.nz•105 days ago

this is the way

devezer.bsky.social•105 days ago

I hereby firmly resist the TEDification of academic talks 😅

mehr.nz•105 days ago

my only Opinion about talks is that most of the time they can be shorter (but rarely TED length). but, then, sometimes you just have something you need to give a long talk on. one of mine the other day was 1:05 and while I'd have liked it to be closer to 45 mins, it kinda needed to be long ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

devezer.bsky.social•105 days ago

Yeah there's nothing wrong with that imo. I have high tolerance for a lot of things, including long talks, reading instead of slides, a lot of technical content, etc. What I personally dislike (even then it's not a rule) is too much showmanship (correctly gendered) and flare, not enough substance.

devezer.bsky.social•105 days ago

flair*

mehr.nz•105 days ago

I think my issue with talk length is that I've become sensitive to audience body language over the years and the longer the talk is, the more people start shifting in their seats, more people duck out early, etc. but I am anti-prescriptivism in science; it's just a pref for my own talks

devezer.bsky.social•105 days ago

I think I have a very high threshold for boredom personally. Both in terms of not getting upset by feeling bored and for finding it okay for the audience to be bored. Idk how to explain. I just think it's fine if people space out or leave after taking what they need. They're adults 😄

mehr.nz•105 days ago

crap i do have one other Talk Opinion which is that i have bad eyesight and when the text on slides is small I just can't read it

devezer.bsky.social•105 days ago

Oh yeah that's just a thoughtful detail and what I always give feedback on to my undergrad students ("what I cannot physically read, I cannot understand"). But it doesn't make the whole talk bad regardless. Rather something that can be improved for clarity.

mehr.nz•105 days ago

absolutely. I do think there are some visual design ideas that are counter-intuitive and not terribly well modeled in many fields (eg, the idea that sometimes you can literally just put a giant photo with a few words and that's plenty, unless there are words you really NEED ppl to read)

killerswan.bsky.social•105 days ago

I follow Bryan O'Sullivan’s advice that code excerpts are fine if you can show an abbreviated excerpt that’s _twenty characters wide_

killerswan.bsky.social•105 days ago

much more than that becomes a “here’s a link to GitHub/GitLab and we can open an IDE if you all really wanna dig deep in a bit”

chapmanresearch.bsky.social•105 days ago

Variation is nice!

remigau.bsky.social•105 days ago

Only started enjoying giving talks when I could do them in my own style.
Now, because I mostly do software dev, I just enjoy doing live demos just so the crowd gets the chance to see me fail live.

michaelschulte.bsky.social•105 days ago

It is nerve wrecking though …

remigau.bsky.social•105 days ago

I call that the spice of life...
Once the talk is done.

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