MANAGING A WORKSHOP IS A USEFUL SKILL.

Inside Higher Ed offers useful advice, for once, from Toni Whited.

The academic seminar culture in the economics and finance field is lively, as it most likely is in other disciplines. The norm is that audience members can raise their hands to ask questions at any point in the seminar. This culture has the advantage of encouraging discussion. When the audience engages with the presenter in real time, important issues can be brought up and resolved in ways that cannot be accomplished with a question-and-answer session relegated to the end of a presentation.

Unfortunately, however, this culture also encourages audience members to ask irrelevant questions, interrupt the speaker prematurely and raise issues designed to shame or badger the speaker, show off, or hijack the presentation.

Economics might be more notorious than most disciplines, and at the departments you might have heard of, workshops might be really unruly, particularly if the old bulls lock horns.

"If I'm going to Harvard, I know I'm going to have twice the overheads because no one interrupts me," says Tomas Philipson, 33, an associate professor of economics at the U. of C. "I come here, I put up the first slide and there's five minutes of discussion. I use half the overheads I would use at another place.

"It can be very rough in those seminars. People tell you: 'This is stupid; why are you doing this?' You get that in your face."

Sometimes, the way to proceed is to pick the fight.

U. of C. economists maintain that the gravest insult at a U. of C. seminar is for the assembled academics to listen and not react; this is a deadly sign the work being presented has not stirred their competitive juices or is too easy a target for their deductive firepower. But those who have been subjected to U. of C. grillings do not always see it as a compliment.

One visiting professor-"a very senior guy whom we like," [finance professor Steven] Kaplan says-was deluged by questions shortly into his presentation. "The next 15 minutes, the guy does not put a transparency up," Kaplan says. Finally, a senior U. of C. economist halted the slaughter.

"Enough with this foreplay," he said. "Let's see some results."

"Sure felt like a lot more than foreplay," the visiting professor responded.

The advice column, though, is for the beginning professor. "First, avoid broad generalizations at the very beginning of the talk." Indeed, that's wasting time. You're presenting a Minimal Publishable Unit. Get to the heart of the matter.

[I]f you start with a generalization, you might touch on somebody else’s expertise. In that case, you are playing in their territory, not your territory, and you are more likely to be disrupted by questions you do not understand.

Second, to avoid this type of interruption, begin with your specific research question, which ensures that the audience will focus on your work rather than on tangential topics. That way, you have immediately brought your audience into your area of expertise, where it will be harder for somebody to trip you up, intentionally or unintentionally. Ultimately, by definition, you know more about your paper than anybody else.

Third, keep the introduction of your talk concise—ideally within five slides. Present your research question, methods and findings first. At this point, you can finally discuss their broader significance. By organizing the introduction elements along these lines, you are more likely to make your audience see the point of the broader implications, so they will be less likely to draw on tangential topics for their questions.

If you're able to limit your entire deck to ten or fifteen slides, you're doing even better. And trim, or ditch, the literature review. "Rather than describing the papers in detail, emphasize how your research builds upon and extends their findings." A presentation that devotes half or more of the allotted time to motivating the topic and going through the previous research never gets to present whatever contribution the presenter is hoping to make. And if the old bulls are peacocking, it's better that they peacock over the premises of your work, or the conclusions you draw.

Get to the conclusions quickly.

Sixth, create effective title slides. Ensure that your titles clearly communicate the main takeaway from each slide. The title is the only part of the slide that will stick in many people’s heads, so make it more than “Results” or “Model.” Ideally, each title should be a complete sentence. This strategy is particularly important for slides with tables or plots. By using topic sentences as titles, you’ll make it easier for your audience to remember the key points of your particular table or figure.

I'd also note: eschew tables. I know that's hard when regression results and descriptive statistics are involved, but unless there's some anomaly in the mean data or several coefficient estimates worthy of discussion, a slide showing an entire table of means or results will put your audience, particularly your older audience members wearing bifocals, in mind of an eye exam.

Overloading slides with text can be counterproductive, as people cannot read and listen simultaneously. Instead, focus on delivering your key points verbally and providing visual support that is easy to digest. Ideally, bullet points should be no more than one line long. When composing slides, it is useful to have a first draft. Then remove approximately three-quarters of the text from that initial draft, leaving only the most crucial information.

Yes, or post points that include only key words. The audience doesn't have to read your slide silently while you read them aloud. But if you flesh out the key words with elaboration, you're keeping their minds active.