- Knowing the goal of your talk is basically knowing
what you want to accomplish with that talk.
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- There are many goals that one could have,
but I would say that the universal,
fundamental goal of giving a research talk
is to inform your audience about your research.
- To teach them something new that you learned
from the experiments that you did.
That doesn't have to be the only goal.
- Do you want to persuade?
- Do you wanna inspire them?
Do you wanna make them curious?
You have to think about,
what is it that you wanna accomplish?
What do you wanna do with this talk?
- Presentations have very different goals
depending on who your audience is.
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I did my PhD in animal behavior.
I basically invited myself to give a talk at UCLA
to a group that was interested
in behavior, ecology, evolution, and culture.
The goal was just debate and exchange.
And so that's a very different presentation
than when my goal was to get a faculty job.
And I interviewed in some departments
that were molecular cell development type audiences,
who don't know anything about monkeys,
or at least about their social behavior,
and I'm trying to convince them
that this is a new perspective,
and that I can do the work.
So the goal is persuasion.
- Setting a goal really helps you
to guide the rest of the presentation.
It's that North Star that helps you stay focused,
and helps keep the talk itself focused.
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