Performing for TEDx Delft Salon

And so the day has come that I gathered all  my courage and gave it my best shot!

The whole journey started almost 10 months ago, when I got an invitation to come and discuss the possibility for a TEDx Delft Salon talk on concrete. I expected that somewhere along the way I'd be kicked out for not being good enough (imposter alert!), but that never happened and I ended up taking my concrete story to the stage...

To start preparing for the performance, I wanted to wipe out all my previous conference presentations, and go back to the roots of my interest in concrete. I reframed the main question: Why is concrete an interesting and versatile building material?

When I started preparing my TEDx talk, I received great guidelines written by Rob Speekenbrink (TEDx Delft founder) and while initially I wondered if all of that is necessary, I learned along the way how important these bits and pieces of advice are.

Now let me go into detail on some of the points that are entirely different from giving a research lecture at a conference:

1. You're a performer

You're in there as a performer, with an audience that wants to learn from you but also wants to be entertained. Initially, I thought if I'd just talk a bit about concrete, that would do. But then I realized I needed to try and make a more lively story, by adding personal anecdotes and using analogies (I used cake throughout my talk).
Initially, I found this idea terrifying. But then, I thought that, if I could climb the stage of a local theater at the age of 17 with a saxophone and a few poems by Pablo Neruda in my head to give an entire performance, speaking about my material of choice for 15 minutes wouldn't be too hard...

2. Listen and learn

This advice does count for conferences as well - but here I mean it even more literally: what kind of story structure do you like best? How do others use slides as a simple visual support? Our focus here is on the techniques others use to convey their message. I've been watching so many TED(x) talks over the past months to learn from others how to deliver a great talk.

3. Write it out

Usually I improvise on the spot and use my slides as a starting point. For this talk, I was asked to write out my story verbatim. I wrote, and rewrote and wrote the last version 10 days ago. Leaving blanks in the text also helped me to define resting points in the story.

4. Have yourself recorded

Although I've been recorded for conferences, lecturing from a lectern, being out there on a stage feels very different. I was recorded on my 3rd trial, and I hated everything about myself in there: my constant blabbering, my gestures and how I pull up my eyebrows. Being aware of these stress-induced actions helped me to focus on my gestures.

5. It takes time

A minute of public speaking takes an hour of preparation. My 15 minutes of TEDx Delft Salon took 55 hours of preparation, just to give you an idea.

6. Don't forget to enjoy

Right before delivering my talk, I looked at the room and told myself: "Well, all these people have come here because they're interesting in the free lunch and your story. Isn't that really cool?" So instead of holding my breath and trying to get it over with, I tried to enjoy the experience (can't say I really succeeded, but at least I tried to enjoy it)

Powerposing to boost your conference presence

I recently feel very inspired by an article and a TED talk that I came across.

The article gives advice on how you can succeed at conferences as an introvert. As an introvert myself, going to a conference can feel like a daunting task, but I recognize myself very much in Brooke's story.

Similarly, I tend to give myself a virtual kick in the mind when I head out into a crowd of unknown, awfully smart people who might discover a flaw in my work. I tell myself to keep my shoulders low and my chin up. Little did I know that actually altering your posture might have a positive influence on your performance. Therefore, I feel eager to share Amy Cuddy's TED talk. She advices us, not to just "fake it until you make it", but to actually "fake it until you become it".



Do you have a way to push yourself out of your comfort zone during conferences?

The basic elements of a presentation with slides

I've written this post for students who will give a research presentation for the first time, pointing out how slides can help you through your talk. In fact, I was recently reflecting on how my style of presenting has changed over the past two years, and what I wish I had known back then. I've reached the point where I can go to the front and present without my stomach trying to escape or my breath turning strange, but I don't fully enjoy it yet and I still have a lot of room for improvement.

1. An overview slide
The audience will appreciate if you tell them first what they can expect from your presentation. If you give an outline of how your presentation will look like, it is easier for the listener to place the different slides and parts of the story within the framework that you present in the beginning.

2. Spend time on your introduction
Don't think you should rush to the core and show the world the wonderful science you are spending your time on. A good introduction is necessary to make sure your audience can actually understand the bigger problem, and then -hopefully- follow your approach to the problem.
Also, on conferences in FarFarAway, I like taking the opportunity to briefly sum up the other research related to my topic done in our research group, and introduce the different partners which work on the general research project of which my PhD is a part.

3. Using formulas
I heard this at TEDxDelft:
“With every formula you show, you lose half of your audience; on my first slide there are two” — Leo Kouwenhoven
Don't fill up your slides with formulas, no one will remember them and maybe people won't be able to read or analyze them when you go over them too fast.
If you need to use a formula (or more), take your audience by the hand and walk them through the equation. I like using animations to highlight parts of formulas and explain step by step why a certain parameter is in the formula. Otherwise, if you only want to point out one parameter, you can use a phrase like: "What I want you to notice in this formula is the relation between XX and XXX." (Credit goes to Dr. Rosenstein, who taught me to explain visual data by grabbing the attention of the audience with the "what I want you to notice here" phrase).

4. How to explain graphs
I hate it when someone says: "and this graph shows the results" and then continues to the next slide. From a course by Dr. Rosenstein I took at Georgia Tech, I remembered the following for the rest of my presenting days:
- explain which variable is on the x-axis, and which units it has,
- explain which variable is on the y-axis, and which units it has,
- explain the data points,
- explain the legend,
- state the conclusion, what we can learn from that graph.

5. The end
Here's a great post on how to end a presentation. It is very similar to how I finish a presentation, including the ending phrase from Dr. Rosenstein's course.

Here's a recent example of one of my presentations.

Presentation at ACI Fall Convention

In a session on "Recent Developments in Reinforced Concrete Slab Analysis, Design and Serviceability" I gave the presentation for which you can find the slides in here:

Shear capacity of slabs and slab strips loaded close to the support

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A variety of topics with regard to reinforced slabs were covered in the session: from punching reinforcement provisions, over the history of slab design and the development of prestressing methods and analysis for slabs.

A presentation in Dutch

Most of the time, I present in English, but every now and then I gt to talk in my native language.

It's a strange sensation that talking about my research in my mother tongue takes me slightly more effort than talking in English, for the following reasons:
- I usually read papers in English, and am more familiar with the technical terms in English
- In Dutch, I feel more tempted to slide into my own dialect, and I have to do extra effort to talk in standard Dutch. In English, I simply have a funny foreign accent.
- I present more often in English than in Dutch, so I am more familiar with presenting in English.

I was wondering if and how other non-native speakers experience presenting their research in their native language...

For those who are interested, here's the presentation I gave:

Afschuiving in betonnen platen

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fib Symposium 2011 - paper and presentation

Last week, I attended the fib Symposium 2011 in Prague, and presented some of my experimental results in the Friday morning session on Construction Technology.

The full paper is published on the CD proceedings, and the short version of 4 pages is published in the printed version of the proceedings. The abstract is the following:

Reinforced concrete one-way slabs subjected to concentrated loads are designed for shear by checking beam shear over an effective width and punching shear. Only a limited number of test data regarding the shear capacity of one-way slabs subjected to concentrated loads is available. To better evaluate the shear capacity of reinforced concrete one-way slabs, a series of experiments has been carried out on continuous one-way slabs (5m x 2,5m x 0,3m) loaded close to the support. The influence of the shear span to depth ratio is discussed. Conclusions about the influence of this parameter on the one-way shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs and possible explanations for the difference with beams are provided. Test results are compared to the Eurocode provisions and a method to calculate shear capacity from the literature. A higher shear strength is found as compared to the Eurocode. As a result of these experiments expressions resulting in a higher theoretical shear strength for the design of one-way slabs under concentrated loads are recommended.

The keywords were: Shear, One-Way Slabs, Effective Width

Here are the slides I used for my 12 minute presentation:

Experimental study of shear in reinforced concrete one way slabs subjected to concentrated loads

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As you can see, I added the tables with the experimental results which I used in the paper as a few extra slides at the end of my presentation. I didn't want to go over all the numbers during my talk, but I wanted to be prepared for more detailed questions. And in fact, I had a question about the flexural capacity of the tested slabs, so I could simply show the table with the reinforcement ratios and explain how we designed the reinforcement.

Preparing a presentation without slides - the aftermath

Today I presented my research in the lab to the parents of the first year students. Talking for 15 minutes straight without slides and to a non-technical audience appeared to me a rather difficult task, but it turned out to be a really enjoyable experience.

Here's what really worked to keep the attention:

1. Point out objects

Even though the group was gathered around my specimen and I, I've been taking the opportunity of standing in the lab to show and point out as many aspects of my testing as possible. I could show the formwork, rebar cages, an undamaged specimen, the damaged specimen in the setup, the frame for the loading, the frame for my measurements, the cracks marked on the specimen, the thickness of the floor... I tried to keep it interactive by giving them some time to have a look through the holes which show the thickness of our strong floor and by inviting them to take a look at the bottom of the slab.

2. Compare with real life situations

I gave comparisons between the loading in our tests and the maximum load of a truck in the Netherlands, I pointed out the cost per square meter for replacing a bridge and told them how many tons of concrete have been used in these experiments. From the reaction on people's faces I could tell that turned out to be interesting information.

3. Keep it light and informative

Although one of the main rules is not to try to be funny, I thought I little joke and smile here and now was working quite well in this context.

4. Let your enthusiasm shine

If you love what you're doing, your enthusiasm will add a little extra to your talking, and it seems to be really appreciated.

Preparing a presentation without slides

On Tuesday I am giving a presentation. That is not breaking news at all, except for the fact that I just have to go and talk for 15 minutes without slides to a non-technical audience.

Here's how I prepared for it:

1. Ask for advice

I went to ask a more experienced staff member for advice, and I was lucky enough to get his preparation sheet of last year.
The useful hints I got were:
- Avoid jargon,
- Point out and show whatever you can to keep the audience's attention,
- Compare to examples and objects from everyday life.

2. What are the important questions to answer?

I tried to imagine what I would be thinking if I'd be walking into a factory or a lab totally unrelated to my field. What came to my mind are the following:
- First of all, where am I?
- Who is working here?
- What are they doing here?
- Why is this research necessary?
- What are these objects?
- How do they work? How do they measure?
- How much time does a test/ a step in the process take?
- What results are obtained so far? What have they learned from this?

3. Mindmap

The first thought I had was to use flash cards and keep these in my hands during the presentation. However, to avoid staring at my cards, I decided I want to go and speak out without any aid except all the material around me in the lab. To have an idea of what I am going to talk about, I sketched up a mindmap based on the questions I came up with previously. Then I started to organize the facts I want to talk about and the ones that I had from last year's presentation around these questions to structures my talk.

4. Practice

If 2 minutes of public speaking requires 1 hour of preparation, I am supposed to roughly spend a work day preparing my talk. I'm planning to go over this several times on Monday, and discuss it in the lab to see if it is accessible enough.

This is the first time I've laid out a presentation around a few basic questions, and a mindmap. I'm quite curious to see how this will work out. What I've learned by preparing this presentation so far, is how easy and effortless mindmapping can be to structure your thoughts to prepare for a presentation.

ASCE Structures Congress 2011 - paper and presentation

Last month, I presented a paper at the ASCE Structures Congress 2011.

The full paper is published in the conference proceedings, as well as online in the ASCE library.
The abstract of the paper is:

When assessing the capacity of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges under the increased traffic loads prescribed in the current codes, shear may become the critical failure mode. To better evaluate the shear capacity of reinforced concrete slab bridges, a series of experiments is carried out on continuous one‐way slabs loaded close to the support. Eight continuous slabs of 5m × 2,5m × 0,3m are tested. The loading position is taken at different a/d ratios. Six slabs with a standard concrete mixture and two slabs with a higher strength concrete are tested. The influence of the loading history, the shear span to depth ratio and the concrete compressive strength is discussed. Conclusions on the influence of these parameters on the one‐way shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs are drawn.

You can also find the slides I used for my presentation here:

Experimental study of shear capacity of reinforced concrete slabs

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Tomorrow's presentation

Tomorrow I will be presenting again at the same symposium where I had my first presentation about my research one year ago.
Last year, my presentation wasn't bad, but there was a lot of room for improvement. I've corrected some of last year's mistakes and wanted to write this out here for myself to see what I've learned, to see if I'll have more to add to this in one year from now, and maybe new PhD students can learn from this too.

1. Prepare ahead
Last year, I had to make my presentation the afternoon before the moment of the presentation. I wasn't expecting that I would be presenting. I checked the box "I would like to give a presentation" but later on I heard that only 3rd and 4th year PhD students would be presenting. Then, the day before the symposium, I came back to my office in the afternoon, after arriving from a transatlantic flight in the morning. Totally jet-lagged I looked at my mail, to find out that I would be the first one to present. If only I would have had some slides ready (just in case, they always come in useful), if only I would have an idea of an outline.... but no,I had to start from scratch at that very moment, I even had to go and take pictures in the lab. I've learned that it is very good to always have something ready, just in case.

2. Know your audience
Last year, I didn't check to whom I would be speaking. I just assumed everyone out there would be a structural engineer. I didn't know it would be open to all civil engineers and architects. So I immediately jumped into the core of the problem, with not much introduction. This year, most of my presentation is figures and concepts.

3. Try out to work with a key message
This year, I made a slide with my key message which I will show twice during my presentation. I hope that will make my most important hypothesis clear enough. It's the first time I try this approach.

4. The importance of the Q&A
Last year I answered some questions too quickly because I thought they were irrelevant. I think the asker was not too happy about that. I promise I won't do this again, and I promise I'll try to let the asker finish his or her question before interrupting (very difficult for me).

Alright, now I'll go back to packing my bag for the symposium. I'm not nervous (yet), which is also an improvement as compared to last year.