If you live anywhere near Chicago or can be around on March 31, 2010, you won’t want to miss the 2010 SCC Midwest Chapter TEAMWORKS trade show. This is always a great show and you can’t beat the price…FREE. The TEAMWORKS show features all the biggest & best raw material and ingredient suppliers in the cosmetic and personal care industry. It also features a half-day educational program. Every cosmetic chemist or interested science major should make it a point to attend.

Here are the details

SCC Midwest Chapter TEAMWORKS 2010

March 31, 2010 – 8:30 AM-6 PM
Donald E. Stephens Convention Center
5555 N. Des Plaines River Road
Rosemont, IL (Chicago)
Educational Program March 31 8:30 AM – noon

New colleagues are waiting, new concepts abound and innovations are within reach – discover
them in Chicago. The Midwest Chapter Society of Cosmetic Chemists (SCC) will host TEAMWORKS 2010, the premier exhibition for formulators among the specialty chemical allied trades, on March 31, 2010, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois-conveniently located near O’Hare International Airport.

Chemists, chemical buyers, engineers and technologists in the cosmetic, personal care, pharmaceutical and other allied industries will mingle among 130+ booths representing prime technology suppliers in the industry. TEAMWORKS 2010 is an opportunity to gather for an exciting learning experience, and to foster friendships in a bond of cooperation and success.

Education, innovation and networking are key focal points during this event. The half-day educational program will highlight the latest material launches to give formulations an added edge, and technology exchanges will occur throughout the exhibition. See below for more information.

Networking opportunities will also abound-grab a colleague during the buffet luncheon, sit down together and debate product development strategies; or arrive a day early to network during the Social Night with some of the great minds in the industry.

A buffet lunch, raffle prize drawings, BINGO card prizes, and a well-appointed networking area will be provided. Pre-registered attendees are also eligible for a raffle prize. (must register by March 16, 2010)

Attendance is FREE! Register online –
Educational Program: Formulating for Marketing Demands – 8:30 AM – noon
8:30-9:00 Continental Breakfast and Networking

8:50-8:55 Opening Remarks
Gene Frank, Raani Corp.

9:00-9:30 Keynote Presentation: A Corporate Strategy for Sustainability
Peggy Ward, Manager of Corporate Sustainability Programs, Kimberly-Clark

9:30-9:35 Q&A

9:40-10:00 Addressing the ‘Free-from’ Conundrum-paraben-free, sulfate-free, etc.
Tim Kapsner, Senior Research Scientist, Aveda Corp.

10:00-10:05 Q&A

10:05-10:20 Coffee Break

10:25-10:45 Formulating for Sensitive Skin
Russell Walters, PhD, Johnson & Johnson

10:45-10:50 Q&A

10:55-11:15 Formulating for Ethnic Care
Ali Syed, CEO, Avlon Industries

11:15-11:20 Q&A

11:25-11:45 Improving Sensory Benefits in Hair Care
Michael Wright, Senior Research Scientist, Nexxus Salon Hair Care/Alberto Culver Co.

11:45-11:50 Q&A

11:55 Closing Remarks

*The education session will open with a continental breakfast at 8:30 am, followed by opening remarks with the keynote presentation beginning at 9:00 am.

Online Exhibitor Guide!

Plan your visit ahead of time and check out the exhibitors today! All exhibitors are listed alphabetically on the online exhibitor guide. Contact exhibitors to set up appointments during the show!

Information is provided about the products and services they offer along with a link to each exhibitor’s website. Check it out anytime and plan your trip through the exhibitor hall.

You’ve gone through preparing the slides for your scientific presentation. And you’ve learned how to prepare yourself to make a scientific presentation.  Now, you’re ready to present!

Ready, Set, Go…

Don’t be afraid to take some alone time 15 to 30 minutes before the presentation. You can use this time to double check materials, and review introductory and summary statements. It seems silly but don’t forget to take a last minute trip to the bathroom and check buttons, zippers, and your appearance. Grab a bottle or glass of water and keep in nearby. Take a few deep breathes while you are being introduced to calm your anxiety, but try not to sigh heavily.

You can ask your audience to turn phone to vibrate or silent. Though don’t expect them to completely turn them off. Also, it’s not uncommon to have audience members tweeting about a presentation they are listening too. So, don’t be offended if you see them typing on their phones.

A Polished Presentation

Monitor your movements and try to avoid habitual behaviors like pacing or fidgeting. Moderate yourself using hand gestures to prevent you from looking stiff, but avoid overdoing it. Remember to monitor your talking speed when speaking. Rehearsing thoroughly before hand will help you keep a natural even pace.

Respect Your Time Limit

Keep your eye on the time. Nervousness often leads one to speed up their speech. Spend a good portion of time rehearsing the presentation so you are comfortable and speak at an even pace. And try not to exceed your time. If you plan to allow questions during the presentation be sure to increase the expected completion time by about 20% when you practice the presentation. You can offer to answer questions outside the presentation if needed.

Never apologize for any aspect of your presentation; this should be your best effort. Apologizing is an admission that you haven’t done a good job in either preparation or delivery. This undermines your message! Hopefully you won’t have to apologize for tiny fonts, or poor slide design if you’ve read my previous post on the topic.

Finishing Touches

Be sure to have prepared a memorable summary to end your presentation and avoid adding any last minute words. This will be the last thing your audience hears and you want it to be well rehearsed, not sloppy. Be sure to state your conclusions clearly. It might also be advisable to have an important piece of data or information on the final slide to avoid flipping through your slides during questions.

Be sure to give credit where credit is due. Acknowledge sources of information and data, contributors, and sponsors. This shows a professional attitude. Don’t be afraid to consider a more interesting approach to acknowledgments like using a collage of colleague photos. Just be sure to keep them professional.

Question & Answer Time

The presentation is done, but how will you handle the Q&A portion? This can be just as stressful as the presentation. You may have given a brilliant presentation, but the Q&A can quickly diminish your credibility if not handled well. You can’t always predict what your audience will ask, but here are a few tips to get you through the Q&A.

• Wait – Allow the person to finish their question before responding. The only exception is when the question is rambling, this is your forum and you have a limited time to get your point across. Break in tactfully by saying, “So, the question you are asking is…” and restate the question following with your answer. Remember your ability to interact with the audience is being judged.
• Repeat – Always repeat each question so the entire audience knows what you have been asked.
• Reflect – Pause to reflect on the question and formulate a response, be sure to ask for clarification if you do not fully understand.
• Postpone – There may be many reasons to postpone answering a question, the topic may not be relevant to your presentation goals or you may be running out of time. Don’t be afraid to take questions after the presentation or during a break. If you find you can’t answer a question, don’t apologize. Instead, offer to answer after you’ve done more research the answer, suggest a resource where they might find an answer or put it to the audience to answer.

Avoid Arguments

Hostile questions pose a special challenge, and they can come in a variety of forms. Not every tough question is a hostile one, but some are and you should be able to spot them. They may come as a challenge to something you’ve said, or even as an attack on you. The best way is to head them off.

During your preparation consider what parts of your presentation could lead to disagreement. You may be able to address these potential questions by embedding what amounts to a rebuttal in your presentation.

Don’t put the questioner on the defensive and certainly don’t criticize the questioner. Get right to the issues. You may find an area of agreement that you can build on in your response. That doesn’t mean you should back down when all your research tells you you’re right. Looking for common ground is not a form of compromise. You can acknowledge the other person’s point of view without agreeing with it.

Stick to the facts and what you know. Stay within the immediate discussion. Avoid offering more facts or opinions that could trigger more disagreement. And avoid getting bogged down in an adversarial exchange that seems to go on forever. Once you’ve covered a topic thoroughly, end the discussion by saying simply that you’ve explained your position and it’s time to move on. You can offer to discuss the issue further after your presentation.

Do interrupt when someone with a dissenting view wanders onto another subject or appears about to give a presentation of his own. Make it clear that time is short and you want to stay focused on the day’s agenda.

Always finish by asking the questioner if you fully answered their question. This acknowledges the questioner and helps the audience feel comfortable asking questions. If the person feels you did not answer fully ask for clarification or suggest that you two discuss later to facilitate timing.

Conclusion

Preparing and giving a good technical presentation is no easy task, but by utilizing these suggestions and taking time for serious preparation, you will be able to communicate effectively and clearly. The better you become at communicating scientific information to your peers, marketers, and even consumers the more you will be able to build trust and credibility.

If you have any tips for preparing and delivering presentations, please leave a comment below and let everyone else know!

During the course of our education and chemist careers, we as scientists are often asked to present information to our cosmetic science minded peers and other colleagues. A well-formed presentation can be a very powerful tool, though it can often be difficult to present data in a compelling manner and presentation slides are often misused. But by taking time to carefully prepare and design your presentation slides you can create an effective presentation.

Getting Started

Let’s start with defining what is a presentation and what is not. The true purpose of a slide presentation is to reinforce content visually but the focus should be on the presenter. This approach requires substantial effort to prepare but engaging your audience so they take away the right message is well worth the effort. It is not a document for your audience to read and nor is it a teleprompter from which you read.

To start you must have a clear vision of your goal for the presentation. You must also understand your audience needs and align your communication strategy with these needs. In addition to understanding demographic information, ask questions like:

* Why are they here?
* Is there a problem that you can solve for them?
* What do you want them to do after your presentation?
* How might the resist the message?

And, most importantly, you will need time to prepare a truly compelling presentation. 36-90 hrs is a good estimate for a presentation with 30 slides. The largest portions of your time should be spent on research and slide design, but ideation, collaboration & review with colleagues, and practice also need to be part of the process.

Data Slides

Carly Fiorina once said, “Our goal now is to then transform data into information and information into insight”. Data slides are not just about numbers and graphs, but the conclusion derived from those numbers and charts.

Have you ever watched a presenter explain a data slide over the course of several minutes and you could still not understand the meaning of the slide? Your audience cannot pull up the data for close inspection so slides are not always a good format for extremely complex data. When this is the case, print it out and distribute, I cannot stress this enough…

if your information is overwhelming the slide create a separate document.

5 rules for presenting data

1. Tell the truth and maintain credibility. Trying to hide or distort conflicting or unfavorable data will ultimately lead to problems later.

2. Get to the point by articulating the conclusions you want your audience to adopt.

3. Select right tool for graphical format. Experiment with different chart types to see which clearly illustrates the point. e.g. pie charts are good for large differences in proportion, but more than 8 slices is not as effective.

4. Highlight the important information by keeping the background neutral and choosing a contrasting color for the data of interest.

5. Keep it simple, clutter and animation can be distracting.

Using Principles of Design

What is design? Design often requires a designer to consider the aesthetic, functional, and other aspects of an object or a process. This requires considerable research, thought, modeling, interactive adjustment, and re-design. Design at its core is about solving problems.

In the words of Karim Rashid, “Designers don’t look at challenges as problems but as opportunities.” By utilizing design principles, we, like designers can make each experience beautiful and memorable.

Effective Design

And effective slide design hinges on the combination of three things

* Arrangement
* Movement
* Visual elements.

Let’s breakdown these components.

Arrangement consists of 6 factors

1. Flow. The flow guides the audience in the order in which you want them to perceive information.

2. Hierarchy. Top to bottom, small to large. This allows you to define a relationship between elements.

3. Unity. Unity can be a grid, graphical style or theme that keeps your slides consistent.

4. Proximity. Proximity shows meaning, objects close together belong together and those separated by large distance can be seen as dissimilar. Lining items up or disordering them also conveys relationship.

5. Whitespace. Whitespace does not necessarily mean white, but open space. Open space is is a good thing, its giving visual breathing room. Clutter is a failure of good design.

6. Contrast. Contrast helps you identify things quickly. Using differences in color, shape, location help the audience quickly identify important points.

Movement

When considering the addition of movement and animation to your presentation, I recommend that you use it with caution. It can be more distracting that useful in most cases. However, custom animations may be useful. I once used an animation to demonstrate how the process of molecular imprinting in polymers.

Visual elements

The visual elements of your presentation are the background, color, text and images. The background is you slide master. It’s best to keep it simple, and you do not need to use existing templates. Your choice of a color scheme could be considerate of your industry or perhaps your company. The choice of color can also reflect personality in appropriate settings.

Fonts have personality, but chose those with clean lines. The size of your font is also very important, view your presentation at 66% to be sure that it is easily visible even to those at the back of the room. Ideally you do not have so many words on one slide that they are extremely tiny.

And finally let’s consider images. Photographic images can be very powerful in conveying concepts. Keep in mind the rule of thirds when selecting images; good photographers rely heavily on this rule. The composition is more appealing when the element of interest is not directly in the center. Divide your image into a three by three grid and move the point of interest into one of the thirds.

The Home Stretch

Once you are finished preparing slides, take some time away from the presentation. After all you have been focused on the same thing for days (at least I hope you have been). Review your presentation and look for instances where you can replace words with an image.

If you find you have trouble reducing the content, consider that a slide presentation is not the right format and elect to hold a meeting or write a report. Don’t forget to ask a colleague or friend to review, a fresh set of eyes will help.

Also, be sure to practice your presentation. You can record yourself giving the presentation to feel more comfortable with the delivery. Repeat these steps, continuing to refine your slides until you are satisfied they clearly convey your message. By the end of this process you will have a powerful and effective presentation.

Next, see part 2 for how to prepare yourself for an effective scientific presentation.

Kelly Dobos is currently a research scientist at Kao Brands and Grad student at the University of Cincinnati. You can follow this ‘coolest cosmetic chemist‘ on Twitter.