[PRL] Never start a talk with an apology

[Mitch]

Thought this might be a good reminder.

Sent to you by Mitch via Google Reader: Apologies via Ezra's Research
by Ezra elias kilty Cooper on 5/9/09

It's very disappointing when someone gets up to do a talk and starts
with an apology about the quality of the slides, or even the work
itself. In the audience, we expect to see the presenter's best. A talk
is, in many ways, a final outcome of the research work, not an
intermediate state, and so it needs to be, simply, the best you can do.

You never tune in to your favorite TV show to see a disclaimer like
this scroll across the screen:

Tonight's show is not going to be very funny and includes lots of shots
of the outside of the house. That's because the writer was hung over
all week and one of the actors turned up an hour late because the car
wouldn't start—you know how that is!! We're really sorry and we promise
that next week's show will be better.

TV shows, like academic talks, are performances, and final
products—rather than working products—of the work that went in to
produce them.

"The best you can do" doesn't have to be the best thing ever. There's a
range in every community, and that's part of life. If someone gives a
mediocre presentation one day and a better one another day, we'd say he
or she improved. But we never adjust our estimation of someone's work
because of excuses.

When you know you've done suboptimal work, or you're not fully
prepared, it's best just to press on and give the best performance you
can. Maybe your slides are crap—either skip some, or clarify them in
words, or redraw them on a whiteboard, or something. Don't just
apologize and expect the audience to swallow something bitter-tasting.
It may be important to characterize what you've done modestly, for
example, being clear about what problems you have and haven't solved,
but that's quite different from an apology. You might give a talk where
you say, "We tried to solve these three problems but we haven't really
solved any of them." And maybe this failure is even because of
desultory work; it still might be worth giving a talk and passing on
what you've learned. "Here's why these problems are hard," you could
say.

Apologies are important, in general, to signal that you know you've
made a mistake. In a relationship of trust, when you've messed up, you
need to acknowledge it; otherwise your confidantes may think the bad
behavior was typical of you, or that you would do it again in the same
situation. Such a relationship might be an intimate one—say you forgot
your lover's birthday—or it could be a working relationship—the writer
on the sitcom, above, who showed up for work hung over, was trusted by
his co-workers to give a strong effort on the show. That he turned in
dodgy work, causing the show to come out crap, is a mistake worthy of
an apology. The apology allows you to regain trust, and of course many
mistakes are forgivable. An apology signals that you learned something
from the mistake, and so others can risk trusting you again.

Contrariwise, TV viewers are not in a relationship of trust with the
production team. They want a damn good show with no buts about it.
Anything else will simply drive them elsewhere—likewise, the audiences
of technical and academic talks.

Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Ezra's Research using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your
favorite sites
-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed