How to prepare an oral presentation for a conference?

a – Structure of the talk

Before starting your presentation, it is crucial to read the presentation instructions on the conference website. You need to give your audience the keys to following your scientific approach. We recommend following the classic structure:

1. A slide with the title, authors, logos of the institutions and logo of the conference.
2. Study background to help your audience understand what is the literature gap, and why your research question is important to address.
3. Question addressed: What your research generally contributes to (broad question) and very specifically what question you want to answer with the study you present. You can write explicitly the objective you will reach during the presentation. 
4. Methods and materials used are well described, to allow your audience to understand what you have done. 
5. Present some results (not all, but the most relevant).
6. Conclusions, Perspectives (What does this work bring to the disciplinary field, to the general and specific research questions stated at the beginning of your presentation? Are new questions emerging? What are the next steps ? We recommend addressing these points with 1-2 take-home messages to end your presentation)
7. A slide of acknowledgements (participants, foundings, institutions,…) & your contact information 

There’s no need for a bibliography slide at the end of your talk. It is better to list references in the format (« Principal author(s), et al., Year ») as you go along, limiting yourself to absolutely essential publications (<10 references).

b – Your slides should be simple and illustrated

• Your slides should not be overloaded: keep in mind that the audience must be able to immediately identify the message conveyed by each slide, without losing the thread of your speech. 
• Choose contrasting colors that meet the Color Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) to ensure adequate contrast. You can check the contrast online using dedicated tools (e.g. https://colourcontrast.cc/). Use plain color backgrounds with sufficient contrast to the content.
• Limit animations to situations where they are really necessary to accentuate your message. In general, it’s better to duplicate slides to show elements progressively than to use animations.
• Use bold to highlight only important points and avoid capital letters, underlining, or italics (except for Latin names).
• Remember that images and figures should be credited if not your own (you can use small font size): for example, for a figure modified from a published paper, specify “Modified from __.”)
• Don’t make too many slides, or you risk having to speak too fast to present everything: in general, it is estimated that you should allow approximately 1 minute per slide. To find the right number for you, train your presentation with a timer, alone or with friends and colleagues. They can help you by giving constructive feedback and making you more at ease with an audience. 
• It’s also a good idea to number your slides, to facilitate discussion during questions after the presentation.

c – Visuals

Graphics and illustrations should be clear and legible. They should contain only the information that supports your speech: it’s a good idea to simplify figures from your scientific article for your presentation, to make them easier to understand. You can also accentuate the most important part of the graphic, for example with a circle or an arrow, to guide the audience… Only use tables if they are very concise and necessary (prefer figures). Don’t show your raw data in tables, it’s unpleasant to look at and rarely helps understand your study (unless it’s very relevant).

d – Text

Use keywords and bullet points rather than long sentences: you don’t want your audience reading instead of listening! The text must be easy to read: don’t use fonts that are too small to be read on a (possibly small) computer screen and favor sans-serif fonts.