How to prepare a conference presentation

Talk formats and what they require

• Oral talk, 12–20 minutes: 10–15 slides, full structure with method and results.
• Short or lightning talk, 3–5 minutes: 3–5 slides, only the question, the main result and where to read more.
• Poster: one sheet, the same logic, but the text is read without you, so conclusion titles are mandatory.
• Invited lecture, 30–45 minutes: an overview of the direction with 3–4 of your own results and references to other groups.

One idea per slide

State the main result in one sentence before opening the slide editor. That sentence becomes the title of the key slide, and everything else is arranged around it: what was known, what was missing, how you got it and what follows.

Write every slide title as a claim, not a section name: not “Results” but “The new method halves the error on three datasets”. A listener who drifted off for a minute recovers the thread from the titles.

A 12-slide structure for 15 minutes

1. Title. Title, authors with the speaker highlighted, institution, conference.
2. Why it matters. One practical or scientific problem the whole room understands.
3. What was known. Two or three key works with DOIs, including recent ones. Where they stop.
4. Question or hypothesis. One sentence in large type.
5. Method. A diagram, not a list. Details go into speaker notes and backup slides.
6. Data and experimental setup. What, how much, how it was evaluated. Units and metrics.
7. Main result. One chart, a conclusion title, the key effect highlighted in colour.
8. Second result or check. Robustness, comparison with the baseline, limits of applicability.
9. Why it works. Interpretation or mechanism. A reference to theory belongs here.
10. Limitations and next steps. Honest and short: what was not tested, what comes next.
11. Conclusions. Three points repeating the result titles.
12. Sources and contacts. DOI references, preprint or code, the speaker's email.

Visualising results

• One chart per slide, labelled axes, units, large label fonts.
• Highlight in colour only what you are talking about. Other lines stay grey.
• Replace tables with charts; if a table is needed, keep up to five rows.
• A method diagram beats pseudocode. Move pseudocode to a backup slide.
• Label illustrations from other people's work with the source right on the slide.

Rehearsal and timing

Run through the talk aloud with a stopwatch at least twice. If you overrun, remove slides rather than speed up. Speaker notes with exact numbers and references let you avoid memorising the text and answer questions calmly.

Prepare three to five backup slides after the last one: method details, extra data, the answer to the obvious reviewer question.

How to build the talk in scid.ai

Find the works on your question in scid.ai, mark the key ones as favorites, upload your preprint to the library and type “make a 12-slide talk presentation from these sources” in the chat. scid.ai shows a plan, you adjust the titles around your main result and get a PPTX with speaker notes and DOI references. Add the charts with your own data in PowerPoint.