"In this paper, I'd like to ..."

Conference season hasn't technically ground into high gear yet, but with bloggers making use of the lazy summer-months (ha!) to prepare their SBL/AAR papers, a few bloggers have been tackling the "to script or not to script" question.  Coming off NAPS, this question is near and dear to my heart, and the diverse and well-formulated opinions of AKMA and Mark Goodacre are fine representative of different schools of paper-presenting.

My confession:  I script.  I know, I know ... the spontaneity, the audience connection, the ability to convey just how well one controls the material -- those are all real benefits, ones I value in others' presentations, and have been taught to value in my own work as well.  Ultimately, however, the decision for me turns on a number of factors, including but not limited to the following:

• How tight is my schedule?  Speakers favored with the attentions of a captive audience -- say, at plenary addresses or church sermons -- have a bit more leeway than contributions to "20-minutes, and once you pass the mark you'll be interrupted and thrown to the vicious glares of the poor sods scheduled to speak after you" panels.  At the risk of sounding as disorganized as I truly am, my ability to extemporate never allows me to hit the mark with quite that precision -- and to impinge upon colleague's time and audiences' good graces seems ... unwise, not to mention in poor form. (Corollary:  What is it people have come to hear -- and if it's not just "your research, you brilliant, sexy beast!," how can I best deliver on what I've implicitly promised my audience?)
  
• How nervous am I likely to be?  Giving a paper before the savage fiends of my local reading group is far less likely to send me grasping for the Beta-blockers than presenting the past year's research to the fifty or sixty leading experts in my field.  (Shout-out to the savage fiends -- you rock, guys!) Even without fear of public speaking, the likelihood of seizing up, babbling incoherently and/or somehow leaving out a little thing like the paper's actual thesis is just too great for my tastes when the kinds of folks who may at some point be amenable to giving me a job.
  
• How can I ameliorate the negative side-effects of reading from a script (or working extemporaneously)?  When working from anything other than a 98%-full script, that means in my case -- tight outline and keeping a timer on hand.  (The stopwatch feature of my iPod touch works nicely.)  When reading my presentation, this means building in breaks at which to establish audience contact, usually when moving from one section to the next, as well as having done a sufficient number of read-throughs to a.) ensure that the text actually flows and b.) annotate the script for inflection, emphasis, breaks, etc.  At a minimum, being prepared rules out the "surprise effect" Mark mentions -- giving the audience the distinct impression that the presenter has never before been confronted with his/her paper. 
  

Of course, in the end, the best laid plans of mice and men (... or, as they say way back home:  Man thinks and God objects! ...)  My much-practiced, reasonably scripted, thoughtfully prepared presentation last weekend fell prey to a Freudian slip of generously sized proportions.  After all those hopes to make myself memorable -- well, careful what you wish for ;)

P.S.:  The "blogging for tenure" conversation continues.  Jim West has weighed in with a somewhat baffling contribution; Goodacre responds here.

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