Flash Talk Oral Presentation details

• 1-2 PowerPoint slides (maximum of 2 slides)
• 3-minute time limit (no questions)
• Make sure to include your poster # and session (Tues/Wed/Thur) in your flash talk!
• Slide details: Widescreen format, 16:9 (width:height)
• Do not use animations, movies, or overlapping images; focus on 2 streamlined slides.
• The Convention Center computers have Microsoft PowerPoint for PC. Your slides must be uploaded in advance. All presentations will have live closed-captioning.

What is a flash talk for?

The purpose of the flash talk is to advertise your poster presentation and draw the audience to your poster for further discussion. To do this, a good flash talk should convey the purpose of your science, your approach, and why it is interesting. Do NOT try to present your data – you can direct people to your poster for that. Instead, think of your flash talk as an “elevator pitch” to explain what the hypothesis was for your experiments and why your findings are cool!

Make sure to prepare well. It takes thought and effort to condense your science down to a “take home message”. This is a great opportunity to learn and practice this skill!

How to give a Flash talk:

1. Be clear about your science – just the goals, the basic approach, the key findings/conclusion.
2. Convey your excitement about the science.
3. Stick to the time limit, so you don’t get cut off early.
4. Practice in advance, so that you can achieve #1-3.
5. Keep your slides simple and don’t get into details – save those for the poster. Use a font size of 18 point or larger everywhere, to ensure readability. 24-28 point is ideal.
6. Include your poster # and session, so the audience can find you there to talk further!

There are great recommendations online about how to give a scientific “flash talk”. Here are a few:

Dr. Jean-luc Dumont has a great lecture on “Creating effective slides” for scientific talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meBXuTIPJQk

EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) has a great 12-point blog on Flash talks: https://www.embl.org/about/info/course-and-conference-office/2020/09/how-to-present-a-memorable-flash-talk-in-12-easy-steps/
…which is distilled in this 3-minute video of useful tips on giving a flash talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBhUaghf2Ek

ASBMB (American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) has many resources on flash talks, including a video with examples from their “Science in a Flash” competition: https://www.asbmb.org/education/science-outreach/science-in-a-flash

Here is another blog on giving an ultra-short but effective science talk: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gone-flash-how-give-effective-ultra-short-talk-milka-kostic-ph-d-/