What makes a good fish talk?

[Silurus]

I am in the midst of preparing the first of the two talks I am going to give at the convention. Well, 45 slides later, I begin to think if I may not be boring the audience with what I have so far.
So what makes a good fish talk? What would the correct balance of fish/habitat/non-fish slides (I am approximately at a 1:1:1 ratio right now)? How much (or how little) text should I put in each slide?

Also what would be a suitable number of slides for an hour-long talk? I'm shooting for around a hundred, which should give me about 30 seconds per slide. Is that too many?

This is the first talk I am giving to a non-scientific audience, so my concern is that there is too much content for the audience to digest.

[Birger]

Depending on the subject, if it was to be on one of your trips, I would be equally interested in the experiences gone through just to get to these fish, or the collection sites, a lot of us do not get to these locations very often or not at all as some seem fairly remote, just this sort of imformation has prompted a trip to africa for myself in the comeing year.
Prepare yourself for all kinds of questions which like these threads can lead in many different directions.

ust a few thoughts,Birger

[coelacanth]

I am in the midst of preparing the first of the two talks I am going to give at the convention. Well, 45 slides later, I begin to think if I may not be boring the audience with what I have so far

That I seriously doubt. Given your level of knowledge and contribution to our understanding of Catfish beyond merely housing them in our aquaria, you could probably just do a song-and-dance routine and they'd be happy.

So what makes a good fish talk? What would the correct balance of fish/habitat/non-fish slides (I am approximately at a 1:1:1 ratio right now)? How much (or how little) text should I put in each slide?

Sounds like a good balance to me. If you have several species to any given habitat, obviously one habitat shot will suffice for all (unless you have a specific reason to return to a feature of the habitat when discussing a particular species). Any pictures of micro-habitats? Personally I love seeing those, more so than general shots of any given water body.

Also what would be a suitable number of slides for an hour-long talk? I'm shooting for around a hundred, which should give me about 30 seconds per slide. Is that too many?

Hmmm, maybe. You may find that some slides may actually warrant longer than 30 seconds, if there is some particular aspect you want to get across. Also depends whether you have all questions at the end, or some during.

Pete

[Silurus]

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I'll go ahead with what I'm doing so far (seems about right).

One other thing I was wondering, would a ratio of catfish:non-catfish slides of about 3:2 be about right? I realize that this is a catfish convention (if it were up to me, I'd chuck out all the non-catfish material), but Andrew tells me there will be non-catfish people at the convention and I'd rather not bore them.

Also, would anyone care to run through my slides to catch errors in spelling/layout/etc. (once I am done)? This may spoil the surprise for you, though. The talk is being prepared in Keynote, but can be easily converted to Powerpoint. Being heavily graphics-intensive, it's a very large file, though.

[Andrew]

From the collecting talks that I've heard, the anecdotes about actually getting to the fish in the first place always make for compelling stories. As anyone who's travelled abroad knows, it's always an adventure and invariably there are amusing events along the way.

Habitat shots are always useful for designing the artificial world for the fish. I've found that I've become a better aquarist by paying attention to where the fish come from, not just by looking at the bare minimum requirements of water chemistry, filtration, etc. This includes looking at all of the organisms and even the inorganic features of a habitat! Definitely include those shots of everything else that lives in the stream, not just to cater to non-catfish specialists, but to challenge the catfish keepers as well.

I've also found that layman audiences in the aquarium hobby like to be challenged by those who have a more scientific background. If we hear words or concepts we don't understand in a talk we often go look them up or even ask the speaker what they mean and then integrate them into the vocabulary of the hobby.

Make the talk what you would like to hear as a hypothetical observer and the audience will follow. The nice thing about the speakers that we've been fortunate enough to have agree to come talk at the convention is that there is a mix of scientific and hobbyist backgrounds to ensure that everyone who attends will come away with valuable insight and information to apply to their pursuit of the hobby.

[Silurus]

Point taken, Andrew.

I've built up a good head of steam at the moment and am now at slide 63, with no apparent end in sight. Somebody stop me!

[pturley]

One thing I always like to see is maps. Particularly in talks about collecting trips, talks with species that will be very new to good potions of the audience or describing species that are collected in smaller tributaries of lesser know river systems (does this personify Asian Catfish or what?!).

Add to that, as a general rule of thumb, Americans are lousy at Geography. (This is not meant as a slam, it's simple observation.) Ask the audience "Where is Myanmar?" and I am certain about half of them will be wrong! (IF you listen closely I think you can hear about half the people in the UK chuckling!) Maps help in connecting the audience to the subject at hand.

I agree with Pete regarding photos of microhabitats.

I also agree with the previous post, 80-100 slides is an hour, but the hardest part is paring it down to that number!

[coelacanth]

One other thing I was wondering, would a ratio of catfish:non-catfish slides of about 3:2 be about right? I realize that this is a catfish convention (if it were up to me, I'd chuck out all the non-catfish material), but Andrew tells me there will be non-catfish people at the convention and I'd rather not bore them.

I'd leave the non-Catfish images in. People need to know what sort of Barbs to feed to their Catfish after all (Joke! My opinions on the non-essential use of live vertebrates as food being what they are....).
If you have any details of the wild diet of the fish, invertebrates captured (other than the leeches you sacrificed youself to..) etc. etc.

[tjudy]

I get the most out of talks that are either recounts of collecting trips (so that I can curse your good fortune and commiserate with the rest of us non-travelling dweebs... man I need a life); or talks that take a very specific group of fish, such as a genus or sub-genus and cover all that is know about them. The overly-long over view of a region's fish (such as the loricarids of south america) is much too broad a talk to be of real value to anyone other than a true beginner.

I have given talks to smaller aquarium clubs on water chemistry and small tank management... these 'workshop' style talks go over pretty well... especially if there are newbies in the crowd; old pros get to particiapte in the teaching as well.

I have discovered that if yuo really want to be a hit... just have a bit of humor and a lot of cool pictures... preferably cool humorous pictures. I have a set of old really bad slides that I like to play 'guess this blurry fish' with.. goes over great.

[Silurus]

Thanks for all the input. The first talk is now complete, and I hope it has a bit of everything (maps. funny pics, and whatnot).
I managed to keep it down to 81 slides, which is not too bad.

[Shane]

HH,
Mine is also complete and came in at 73 slides encompassing 4 maps and 130 photos. It seems to time out at 45-55 minutes. I have run through it about three times and refined it based on suggestions from friends and family. I did not include many non-catfish slides although there are some. Fish photos to habitat are about 3-1, but that is mainly because most fish slides contain 2-4 photos per slide while most habitat shots are full screen.
I would love to review your presentation if you would like.

[Silurus]

Shane,

The talk weighs in at a hefty 110MB in Keynote (I think it'll be around the same size when converted to Powerpoint), and given your current network status, I am not sure if I can get it out to you. Rusty previewed it and gave it a clean bill of health.

I am starting to prepare the second talk, which would hopefully be less graphics intensive. You can preview that once it's done instead. Or I could give you the show the Wednesday before the convention when we meet. By that time, I can only afford minor tweaks, though.

[Shane]

Probably a good idea since the fastest connection I can get is 45.3 Kbps.
-Shane