- Ah, the Q&A, I do think the fear of the Q&A
tends to be a little outsized
of the actual experience of the Q&A.
(gentle music)
- There is more upside than there is downside
in Q&A sessions.
Those are really the opportunities to figure out,
did you engage with your audience?
- 99.9% of the people who are seeing your talk are there
because they're interested in what you're talking about,
and the questions that they're there to ask
are because they want more information
or because they want to help you.
What questions are they gonna ask me?
What comments are they gonna have?
What can they tell me that might help me do my work better?
Or what are they excited about
that I might get excited about?
(gentle music)
Is there a way to predict
what questions are you going to get in the Q&A?
Obviously, to a certain extent, no, you can't predict.
But some of it you might have suspicions about
because they're open questions or conflicts
or differing models in your field potentially.
Talk to your peers and your advisor
about what questions they have gotten.
What does your gut instinct about your research area
tell you that people are gonna have questions about?
(gentle music)
- I'd include most of the information in my introduction.
And obviously,
sometimes you cannot answer certain questions.
You have not thought of your problem,
of your research in a certain way, and that is fine.
It is important to think of a scientific talk
as a learning experience.
Because those questions will help you figure out
things you didn't know about your work,
and will help you improve on what you're doing.
(gentle music)
- There's always going to be that weird question
that comes from the back.
And you cannot do anything about it.
- The way I approach that is by,
first of all acknowledging when I don't know something.
Second, what I do is I try to think with my audience.
I try to challenge them to find an answer for that question.
Giving that person the chance
to express their opinion about my scientific talk,
and to tell me more about why they're asking that question,
and asking them for input.
And I can tell you that people are very happy
to give you their opinion.
- I tried to come up with a set of answers that I felt like,
at least could help defuse any challenges.
"That's really interesting, I wanna look into that."
"Oh, can we talk about that later?"
"I'd really like to learn more
about what you're talking about."
"That's a really interesting question."
"This is my first thought on that,
but I need to do more research."
- It's okay to admit you don't know,
graciously acknowledge the suggestion
or the question the person has asked you,
and tell the person you'll get back to them.
- For the most part, Q&A sessions at the end of a talk
are a space for scholarly exchange.
People are trying to figure out, how did you do this?
What does this mean?
What is the significance of this?
They're trying to start a conversation.
- Good presenters have lots of Q&A
at the end of their talks.
Because they were able to engage people
from the moment they started speaking
to the end of their talk.
Dialogue and debate about research is core
to the research process.
(gentle music)