Talking to Judges: The Presentation

From Stepping Up

What Judges Want

Stepping Up Guide

Section Home Aesthetics: The Board How to Deal with a Bad Judge Practice, Practice, Practice Talking to Judges: The Presentation The Judge Wish List Top 10: Mistakes Judges Make Top 10: Mistakes People Make During Judging

A good judging session is contingent on many things, the most important being presentation. This brief section includes some tips on how to enhance your presentation and tailor it to higher level judging criteria. For even more information on how to put together visual and oral presentations, please refer to the section Lookin' Good (and Sounding Even Better) .

• This is very important. Communication is everything.

• Know your material inside and out. I find that writing out my presentation multiple times was important: it greatly increased fluidity when I was speaking. However, others find that preparing in this way is excessive and unnecessary. They may prefer writing out “bullet-points” and then improvising the rest. It’s up to you to decide what works best for you.

• At the high-level competitions, it is very important to make references to the research of others in your field. This increases the credibility and the uniqueness of your project. Even if the findings of others disagree with your project, it can look extremely impressive if you offer comparisons.

• It is also important to emphasize applications and the relevance of your project. This gets people excited and enthusiastic about your project. The ultimate goal is for the science to translate into a tenable benefit to society. If your project contributes even an ounce of knowledge to the culmination that will lead to a betterment of human lives, that is something to mention.

• If you don’t mention this in your presentation, you WILL BE ASKED: how did you come up with your project? I have always preferred briefly mentioning this in my presentation.

• Expect to be interrupted. Yeah, it can be frustrating. Here’s a video of the 2007 Best in Fair project at ISEF. The project on thermodynamic solubility of carbon nanotubes won the top $50 000 scholarship prize. Note how he had hardly finished a sentence before he was interrupted with another question. He did a great job.

• Most people will ask you to talk for about 5 – 10 minutes before they ask a few questions. Others will ask you very specific questions from the start.