• must be well organized, i.e., must follow a clear logical development,

• must have a structure that is apparent to your listeners (which means that you should work from a detailed outline, the essence of which is transparent to your listeners),

• must be surgically focused on the background of your audience (which means, in the context of a physics colloquium attended by non-specialists, that you will spend more time on background than on the details of your specific contribution),

• must be illustrated with a modest number of transparencies that are clearly relevant as support for your discussion and---most important---are legible to the audience,

• must be well prepared, and

• must be dynamically, engagingly, and lucidly presented.

Among other things, your attention to these details provides basis for some of the comments we will make in letters of recommendation.

In preparing a seminar, you should work closely with a faculty advisor who will

• meet with you well in advance of your talk to discuss its general structure and approve the topic,

• provide counsel about expository issues as you prepare your talk,

• listen to and criticize a dry run, complete with transparencies, two or three days before your talk, and

• meet with you after your talk for an assessment of what went well and what didn't.

Most professional societies have guidelines for the presentation of talks at their meetings. For example, you will find the guidelines published by the American Physical Society at the URL

http://www.aps.org/meet/guidelines.html

and we urge you to take a look at those guidelines as you begin to prepare your talk.