When you are giving a presentation, there are a number of decisions you have to make. How many words to put on each slide[1], what colour to make the slides[2], what you’re going to talk about[3], and many others.

Today, I want to focus on how you plan your presentation so as best to deal with ‘why did you?’ type questions. This is most helpful when you’re giving academic presentations, where you will likely have multiple people in the audience who actually know more[4] than you do about parts of what you’re talking about.

When you’re planning a presentation, it’s often tempting while you’re doing a survey of the field to go into an equal amount of depth all across the field, no matter how much you actually know about the field. This may be slightly better for the audience, but it means that in some parts of your presentation, you will not be able to answer even one ‘why?’ question[5].

It is better to decide on how many ‘why’ questions you want to be able to answer, then you can design your presentation so that there is always that amount of space between what you are presenting and your knowledge. You will be better able to serve your audience by being able to answer a reasonable depth of question, and you’re much less likely to embarrass yourself.

[1]None, if possible.
[2]Whatever helps keep the audience awake, I tend to use black on white for this reason.
[3]I recommend Keybeards and Bagpopes.
[4]Not to be confused with people who have the delightful combination of liking to hear themselves speak and the urge to tear others down while not really knowing much about the topic at hand. Sometimes this is a fine line.
[5]Cf. ‘Five Whys‘.