Welcome, audience members and workshop participants.
The session you attended is not an end: it is just the start
of a learning trajectory. To anchor what you have learned
and discover what the session could not cover, consider
the actions below, organized along our sessions' topics.
Our online resources are there for the sharing. Feel free
to forward the links to your family, friends, colleagues,
or students, and to share them broadly in social media.
Effective communication for rational minds
Written documents, oral presentations, graphs
Download summaries, examples, and helper materials
directly from the site of Trees, maps, and theorems.
The summaries serve as handouts for our sessions.
Download Traditions, templates, and group leaders,
our booklet on barriers to effective communication.
Be sure to share the link with your group leader, too.
Watch the video of Jean-luc's 2013 talk at Stanford
on “Creating effective slides: design, construction,
and use”. See our YouTube channel for more videos.
Delivering your presentation
remotely
Download a summary of our talk on delivering remotely.
Decide what (not) to share through videoconferencing,
optimize your workspace wherever you are, and engage
your audience through verbal, vocal, and visual delivery.
Download instructions and scripts to switch apps
and advance slides in the background on macOS.
Effective research posters
Download the booklet for concepts and sample poster,
handout, and even promotional flyer—all commented.
You can download the samples separately for printing
or viewing in isolation, without the booklet's comments.
Watch our video
on “Presenting your research poster”.
See playlists on our YouTube channel for more videos.
Communicating science
to nonscientists
Download a commented sample text for nonscientists
from our former Nature series on English communication
for scientists. (Unfortunately, Nature no longer supports
the e-platform on which they had implemented the series.)
Watch the video of Jean-luc's 2012 talk at Stanford
on “Communicating science to nonscientists”.
See playlists on our YouTube channel for more videos.
Teaching is not learning
Watch the video of Jean-luc's 2014 talk at the University
of Chicago on “Going beyond the traditional lecture”.
See playlists on our YouTube channel for more videos.
Watch Eric Mazur's confessions to get additional insight.
Eric speaks from his experience as a physics professor
at Harvard; his views on lecturing are in line with ours.
Persuading other people
Download a handout for our session on persuading
other people. Analyze your current persuasion style,
then broaden your approach. Remember to listen first.
Critical thinking
Download a summary of our talk on critical thinking
(Everyone's favorite mistakes). Question assumptions
and make better decisions—for you and for others.
Being efficient (during your PhD)
Watch the video of Jean-luc's 2015 talk at TEDxGhent
on “Personal efficiency: desirable and achievable”.
See playlists on our YouTube channel for more videos.
Download the slides from our lecture on being efficient
during your PhD (and during the rest of your life, too).
Decide what to change in your life, and just do it—now.
Read our related article on how to work more efficiently
in the October 2013 issue of Optics and Photonics News:
a framework for making the best use of your limited time.
Read our related article on whether to be a perfectionist
in the December 2020 issue of The Optimist (a journal
by PhD students to “help you survive the valley of sh*t”).
Networking for researchers
Download a summary of our recent talk on networking.
Stop finding excuses and start doing it—now. In fact,
you probably network more than you realize already.
Get Christina Willis's book on Sustainable networking
for scientists and engineers from SPIE Press. You can
download the full PDF of it (free) or buy the hard copy.
An effective curriculum vitæ
Download the booklet with concepts and sample CVs
for a recent graduate, a researcher about to get his PhD,
and a professional with already 18 years of experience
(original and revised versions, each time with comments).
Running effective meetings
Download the booklet with concepts and illustrations
(for meetings in the corporate world, not in academia).
If you would like to be informed of talks or workshops
you can attend in your part of the world, sign up here.
Also, you are welcome to invite either or both of us
(Jean-luc and/or Geneviève)
to connect on LinkedIn.
We love to hear from you. Do let us know what you enjoyed
and what you would have liked but did not get in the session.
In the future, tell us about your successes—or your doubts—
in applying our guidelines. .
