Presenting your research. A guide for speakers

The first edition of this guide appeared in 2007 when the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design hosted the world congress of the International Association of Societies of Design Research in 2007. Many people believe that an author who can write a good research paper should know how to present the paper to a live audience. While authors should indeed know how to present their work, reports from conferences and seminars in many fields suggest that this is not the case. International research conferences are now common with researchers from different cultures and nations. Within and across disciplines, conference speakers represent a wide variety of fields and practices. Because of this, we speak many different languages: the different languages of our nations, and the different working languages of our disciplines and professions. Sharing ideas and learning from each other requires communicating our research effectively.