I went to the SCCIE-RIE conference this weekend. While listening to the presentations, I was very puzzled by the style of most presenters. John Cochrane, a finance professor at the University of Chicago's business school, has a fine piece of advice for writing and presenting (click here). It was written a while ago and the principles in the article actually have been talked about for a long time. And you thought everybody in the trade knew...
Alas, nobody takes the advice by heart. For presentations, Prof. Cochrane urges the presenters to put the main results upfront. You don't spend your precious first 30 minutes on motivation and another 30 minutes on literature review. That, unfortunately, was what most of the presenters at the conference did.
How could this happen? There are many possibilities. First, those presenters have no idea what the best way to present is. That I cannot help. Secondly, they may intentionally ignore the advice. Either they believe it sucks or they have better ideas in their minds. Well, their "better ideas" didn't work--- I was so sleepy throughout the conference and got very little out of it.
My ass-kissing disclaimer: There were a few gems, though. I learned a lot from a discussant in our department and also from my adviser, even though my adviser told too many unappreciated jokes in his presentation.
(Picture: Prof. Cochrane, GSB, The University of Chicago)
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