Last week I delivered some closing remarks to the (very successful!) ENQUIRE postgraduate conference. Various PhD deadlines, attending conference sessions and err (whisper it) my lizard brain meant that the task of writing the remarks began at 2pm. I was speaking at 4pm, so this definitely falls into the "sub-optimal" class of presentation preparation. I'd picked up a couple of ideas during the conference and was helped out enormously by a friendly tweet, but how to put it all together - intelligibly - in a very short space of time?

A device used by my academic supervisor popped into my head. When asking a class to read a chapter, he always asks them to come back next week with three key points. As well as focusing in on key aspects of the text, it provides a ready-made structure to note taking.

Why three? Well, instinctively it seems a neat number of things to look at. Whether that's because of its mathematical qualities or its prevalence in literature. Jokes often often rest on a ternary rhythm. Essentially, it just feels neater than two or four (five, I would argue, is too many for a presentation).

So I went with three sources for the inspiration mentioned in the friendly tweet:

1. academic peers
2. academic 'heroes' (our plenary speakers)
3. the ENQUIRE journal

This structure makes it much easier for your audience to follow you, as you can simply explain at the beginning what you're going to cover. It also makes it much easier for you, as the speaker, to drop in the vital signposts which help keep your audience engaged. So before talking about academic peers, say something like "the first source of inspiration, our academic peers" then after that section "so that was the first source of inspiration, our academic peers, now for the second: our academic heroes". This seems fairly banal when written on the page, but it makes a huge difference in keeping an audience with you.

After these three points, I attempted to draw it all together, turning the idea of sources of inspiration on its head and suggested something that the audience could be inspired to go and do by all the great stuff they'd seen in the last two days. My suggestion was to go and start a postgraduate journal and/or conference in their own university, as they still seem to be the exception rather than the norm amongst PhD students. Then there was just time to thank the speakers, organisers and finally the attendees, suggesting they finish by giving each other and themselves a big round of applause. Always a safe note to end on...

This is by no means a 'set in stone' template for how to do a presentation - just an example of how we can reach for familiar patterns to structure our talks, especially when prepaation time is tight. While dividing your presentation up into three parts is a handy way of signposting to help your audience, it doesn't follow that they will remember all three of those things once you've finished talking. You might have to set your sights even lower if you want your ideas to stick. But that's for another post...