Seminars, workshops and talks are integral parts of my life. Whether give or listen to one, if it is not interesting and imaginative, becomes mental torture. Out of courtesy one cannot walk out. So, people end up being sitted with vacant eyes, numerous yawns and haphazard scribbles in the notepads, silently praying to the speaker to end the presentation early. Somehow the talk ends. Then comes another embarrassing situation. Questions please. Now if anyone ended up not understanding a single word after the first two introductory sentences, how s/he is supposed to ask questions? The dignified speakers will smile, walk hither and thither encouraging people to ask questions. In the mean time the bored listener will feel like being an ultimate dumbo. I started making points of dos and don'ts, as speaking is part of my profession. These facts came to my mind slowly in discrete manner. You can say practically I wrote this blog while slugging in some these sessions.
If you are invited for a talk:
1. Make sure your topic is in alignment to the occasion's demand, otherwise refuse to accept the invitation outright.
2. Try to learn about the attendees' educational background and grasping power as far as you can. Delivering nitty gritys of computational biology to Microbiologists in a evolutionary biologists' gathering will definitely have high scopes of disaster, how hard you may try to please the audience.
3. Do not loose track. You can definitely talk a lot about diverse topics. But, mixing can be really annoying at times. Play safe.
4. Try to read your listeners' mind. Look for peripheral signs of boringness like vacant stares, frequent yawning, changing sitting positions every 5 minutes, studying the roof, looking at others and a notebook getting passed between multiple people. Definitely it will contain scribblings about how boring is the orator.
If found any, be sure you are at wrong venue and wrong place among wrong listeners. Try to skip as many slides as you can and finish the talk quickly. Believe me, It will be a respite to both the parties.
If the talk is successful, some tips for the Q and A session:
5. Do not comment back on silly questions. I know, they can irritate you, but your comments will affect other people intending to ask next. Be patient with the queries and try to explain them as simply as you can .Technical gizmos will puzzle the participants more
6. By chance, if you do not know answer to any question, be frank rather than babbling something inconvenient and unexplainable. You are also a human being at the end of the day. You possibly cannot know and remember everything on this earth. Humbly accept this fact.
If you are a participant, try not to:
7. Attend workshops less related to work. It will minimize the boredom definitely.
8. Frown at organizers and all, once you are there.
9. Show attitude. A smiling approachable face takes you a long way while interacting with other participants and organizers.
10. Show clustering tendency with other people of your parent institute. It will discourage other institutes' participants from interacting with you.
11. Skip sessions in lieu of sight seeing. You never know, when chance can happen and you'll encounter something worthful. Sight seeing can wait till the workshop ends.
12. Emphasize on food and photographs. They are not that important. A workshop/seminar is meant to open more doors in your mind. Other things can happen any time.
13. Try utilizing the opportunities or leave the scope for another deserving person rather than ending up in a boring arrangement.
At last I will say talk sensibly. Advocate for interesting talks and useful workshops. Be choosy and utilize your power in selective manner. Good Luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment