Visualize 6 Pages in 1 Slide?
October 20, 2012 6:11 PM Subscribe
How do I visualize the content of six pages on one PowerPoint slide? Graphical palpability preferred.
I'm giving my first academic conference talk in a month - it's on a lit review I wrote that includes a six page table, with detailed information about each of the articles reviewed. My advisor thinks I should briefly demonstrate in the presentation that the table exists - though, obviously, I can't talk through all its content. (Audience members will be able to pick up the full paper to read it).
I can't think of a good way to create a visual of these six pages. The visual should show enough detail to indicate that there are six pages, and that they're full of content, but doesn't need to be more detailed than that. How should I show this? Recommendations on both programs and techniques taken.
I'm giving my first academic conference talk in a month - it's on a lit review I wrote that includes a six page table, with detailed information about each of the articles reviewed. My advisor thinks I should briefly demonstrate in the presentation that the table exists - though, obviously, I can't talk through all its content. (Audience members will be able to pick up the full paper to read it).
I can't think of a good way to create a visual of these six pages. The visual should show enough detail to indicate that there are six pages, and that they're full of content, but doesn't need to be more detailed than that. How should I show this? Recommendations on both programs and techniques taken.
Treat your PP presentation as an outline that guides your audience through the actual presentation and let your handouts and some printed copies of your paper fill in any information gaps. The PP should summarize, illustrate and give room for mental recuperation and contemplation.
A few words or an illustration is often sufficient for any individual slide. Long paragraphs, crowded bullet lists and multiple illustrations are signs that your PP is imposing on the territory of your handouts.
It's challenging to give more precise suggestions without having read your paper, but generally have more slides with less content. Remember, they are there to guide the audience and just because you have many slides doesn't mean your presentation will become more complex or talk longer time.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:34 PM on October 20, 2012 [1 favorite]
A few words or an illustration is often sufficient for any individual slide. Long paragraphs, crowded bullet lists and multiple illustrations are signs that your PP is imposing on the territory of your handouts.
It's challenging to give more precise suggestions without having read your paper, but generally have more slides with less content. Remember, they are there to guide the audience and just because you have many slides doesn't mean your presentation will become more complex or talk longer time.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:34 PM on October 20, 2012 [1 favorite]
Extract parts of your table relevant to your talk. Does the audience need to see the entire thing? Nine times out of ten, the answer is no.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:53 PM on October 20, 2012
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:53 PM on October 20, 2012
Watch this and then this. There is a lot of great advice in the second one on how to do a presentation on a paper. In short, your presentation is not your paper, it's more like your advertisement for the idea in your paper. (It's focused on computer science but it's all words and pictures just like every slide deck ever.)
In your shoes, rather than talk about this table, I'd talk about the analysis building of the table. In your talk you can then say that there are several pages of this analysis in the paper and you'll let the audience look over the whole thing at their leisure. There might be a clever way to summarize things graphically but not knowing your subject, I'm not going to hazard a guess as to how that can be done.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:32 PM on October 20, 2012
In your shoes, rather than talk about this table, I'd talk about the analysis building of the table. In your talk you can then say that there are several pages of this analysis in the paper and you'll let the audience look over the whole thing at their leisure. There might be a clever way to summarize things graphically but not knowing your subject, I'm not going to hazard a guess as to how that can be done.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:32 PM on October 20, 2012
Why do you need a visual of the 6 pages? If your intent is to show the number of articles reviewed and/or effort that went into the review, you could just list the number of articles. If you want to go a step further, categorize the articles by year or any other relevant criterion.
Then choose one (maybe the most recent or most representative article), take the audience through the content and reiterate that X many articles were reviewed in this manner.
posted by prenominal at 10:31 AM on October 21, 2012
Then choose one (maybe the most recent or most representative article), take the audience through the content and reiterate that X many articles were reviewed in this manner.
posted by prenominal at 10:31 AM on October 21, 2012
The visual should show enough detail to indicate that there are six pages,
Is it actually important to your audience that there are six pages to this table? Not five, not seven, but SIX? Pages? Pages are a concept that is only relevant to us here because your paper was published on paper. (As far as I can tell) the fact that you had to publish this table in an academic paper is the ONLY reason the table IS six pages. When your audience hears about this table through your illuminating powerpoint presentation, why on earth would it matter that the table is "six" "pages"?
I like 1000monkeys' idea of just including an excerpt, or hippybear's suggestion to include a simplified, magnified view alongside.
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 1:36 PM on October 21, 2012
Is it actually important to your audience that there are six pages to this table? Not five, not seven, but SIX? Pages? Pages are a concept that is only relevant to us here because your paper was published on paper. (As far as I can tell) the fact that you had to publish this table in an academic paper is the ONLY reason the table IS six pages. When your audience hears about this table through your illuminating powerpoint presentation, why on earth would it matter that the table is "six" "pages"?
I like 1000monkeys' idea of just including an excerpt, or hippybear's suggestion to include a simplified, magnified view alongside.
posted by The Biggest Dreamer at 1:36 PM on October 21, 2012
Speaking as someone who both creates PowerPoint presentations and has to sit through them: dear god PLEASE do not put a 6-page table in your presentation in ANY FORM.
My advisor thinks I should briefly demonstrate in the presentation that the table exists
…? "Demonstrate that the table exists"? No. Create a presentation that covers your topic and is formatted and presented in a way suitable to the PowerPoint format. Mention the table verbally during your presentation, or include a footnote on one of the slides pointing to it. But don't be persuaded to turn a presentation into a slideument.
If you do really need to present large amounts of tabular or textual data during a presentation, I think the advice at Think Outside the Slide is pretty good.
posted by Lexica at 8:17 PM on October 21, 2012
My advisor thinks I should briefly demonstrate in the presentation that the table exists
…? "Demonstrate that the table exists"? No. Create a presentation that covers your topic and is formatted and presented in a way suitable to the PowerPoint format. Mention the table verbally during your presentation, or include a footnote on one of the slides pointing to it. But don't be persuaded to turn a presentation into a slideument.
If you do really need to present large amounts of tabular or textual data during a presentation, I think the advice at Think Outside the Slide is pretty good.
posted by Lexica at 8:17 PM on October 21, 2012
Response by poster: Thanks for the help, everyone. I went with a modified version of this technique to create a visual reminder that my excerpt from the table was part of a much larger project.
posted by Apropos of Something at 10:30 PM on October 21, 2012
posted by Apropos of Something at 10:30 PM on October 21, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by 1000monkeys at 6:21 PM on October 20, 2012