37. Crafting Your Signature Talks: Prof Phillip Dawson on developing repeatable academic presentations that build your reputation
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Imagine having an exceptional talk in your back pocket that you can confidently deliver anywhere, anytime... A talk that consistently wows audiences and builds your reputation as a go-to expert in your field... A talk that might even turn into a book one day. Prof Phillip Dawson shares how developing repeatable talks can transform speaking from a last-minute scramble into a sustainable career-building practice.
Phillip is the co-director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, and he's given talks at nearly every Australian university, as well as countless institutions worldwide. What makes his approach unique is that he's developed a sustainable speaking strategy built around just 1-2 exceptional presentations that he continuously refines and reuses—a stark contrast to the academic norm of creating unique talks for every opportunity.
"If you book me to give a talk, you're going to get something good. And I just don't know if I have it in me to keep on creating brand new good things," Phillip explains. "The badge of honour is quality."
This approach evolved organically from Phillip's research practice. While working on a big project, his team developed a slide deck that kept getting requested at different venues. "Eventually it became part of my strategy on big projects to say to the team, Hey let's collaborate on making one really good slide deck for this thing," Phillip explains.
He now maintains two signature talks — one on assessment security and AI, another on feedback literacy — each refined through dozens of presentations and evolved into career-defining assets.
Whether you're struggling with speaking preparation burnout or looking to transform your occasional talks into career-defining presentations, this episode offers a practical roadmap for developing sustainable speaking practices that build your reputation while saving your sanity.
Our conversation covers:
The strategic process of developing your signature talk topics
How to iterate and refine presentations through low-stakes testing
Balancing customisation with consistency across different audiences
Structuring talks for maximum impact and audience engagement
Handling difficult Q&A sessions and challenging audiences
Negotiating speaking opportunities and setting boundaries
The unexpected career benefits of repeatable excellence
Prof Phillip Dawson’s Top 12 speaking tips:
1. Find your gravitational pull
Don't guess what people want to hear from you — look at the data. Review your speaking requests and see what topics people naturally come to you for.
"What does everyone keep asking me to do? What's that gravitational pull? What's the thing people really want you to talk about and build the great talk around that?" - Phillip Dawson
2. Limit Yourself to 1-2 Signature Talks Maximum
Resist the temptation to create endless different presentations. Focus on developing just one or two exceptional talks that you can refine to perfection.
"Ideally one or two, don't have five... For each one of your suns, which is ideally one or two, you've got the one dominant talk that you wheel out." - Phillip Dawson
3. Start Low-Stakes, Build to High-Stakes
Plan a series of practice opportunities leading up to important presentations. Use departmental seminars and smaller venues to test and refine your content. Use each presentation as a testing ground to refine your content, messaging, and delivery.
"I had the keynote I remember was in June and it was probably around January that I started building what became the deck for that one. So to start building it, I did a departmental seminar at my university." - Phillip Dawson
"Let's say you're an ECR, you still might not really know exactly what your niche is... it might be actually fine to go and do a lot of panels and do some talks and experiment and this might form the foundational layer, generating that raw material, which over time you will refine into your perhaps one or two or three core talks." - Chris Pahlow
"We actually had to go out to potential places that we could speak at. And the sell was, I'm happy to just go in, try this out for free. We even travelled interstate for this and funded it out of the project grant." - Phillip Dawson
4. Design Slides for Your Audience, Not Yourself
Avoid text-heavy slides that serve as speaker prompts. Keep your notes separate and make slides that actually help the audience understand your content.
"Too often, people's slides are not there for the audience. The slides are there to prompt the speaker about what to say... I try really hard to have slides that are just for the audience." - Phillip Dawson
5. Engage emotions, not just intellects
Check in with how your audience feels about your topic early in your presentation. Use personal stories, humor, interactive elements like pair discussions, and visceral examples that hit emotionally. Academic talks often ignore emotions, but feelings drive engagement and memory.
"Just getting people to say how they feel about things and actually having a conversation about feelings in the space is so powerful. Academic talks are often presented completely removed from feelings, but you've got to know everyone in the audience is having feelings the whole time you're there… I usually try and do it up top, its been so powerful and I get just so much positive feedback. And that’s one really minor thing that I do. It takes two minutes to check in with people about how they're feeling about the topic." - Phillip Dawson
“ I give a bunch of examples, including sad example. One of the examples I give is that during the Christchurch earthquake, one of the really big buildings that collapsed and killed a lot of people, the engineer in charge of designing that had a fraudulently obtained degree. And, that's a matter of life and death. But then I also give, like the Florida elevator maintenance exam. There was a cheating ring in that, and we all have a bit of a laugh about next time you get into an elevator, think, did the people actually, you know, and that hits viscerally as well.“ - Phillip Dawson
6. Handle Q&A like a professional:
"It's always okay to take something on notice... my research doesn't cover that, I don't know about that, or I can get back to you. And being seen to physically write someone's question down is so validating for that person… Being seen to physically write someone's question down is so validating for that person. They're like, yes, I asked a worthwhile question. It got written down." - Phillip Dawson
Remember that academic questions often aren't genuine information-seeking: "Don't always take it on as like real thing. It might just be a question asked for the sake of asking a question."
7. Take Criticism with Curiosity
Remember that feedback represents how someone might interpret your content, not necessarily truth. Take distance before processing harsh criticism and approach it with genuine curiosity.
"The person's not necessarily right that's giving me the feedback, but this represents a way that someone could interpret what I'm saying." - Phillip Dawson
“ I try really hard to jot down those comments, save them for later, and do, try and translate them rather than being a mean comment from someone into, well, what can I do with this?“ - Phillip Dawson
“What I've found has helped me tremendously is trying to approach these situations with curiosity. And even with, sometimes a really mean spirited piece of feedback that, perhaps even is intended to hurt.. I will try and take a breath. Sometimes I might not be thinking about it straight away. I might need to go You know go to the gym Go for a walk in a park calm myself down and then I try and think okay, that's interesting I wonder what that means like I wonder what they're not understanding or what's behind that. And i've found that has helped me have a healthy distance quite a lot of the time.” - Chris Pahlow
8. Use Data and Reflection to Continuously Improve
Write down big moments after presentations. If your talks are recorded, analyse retention patterns to see where you lose people.
"I'll go in and look at some of the analytics that you can get... there's an audience retention graph. Where you can see... what are the key moments where people just leave my video or skip over something and that's really powerful for me." - Phillip Dawson
Look for patterns: "The observations I have is two things. One of them is when I'm being like boring but another one is when I'm being challenging and I try to lower the boring... but I don't get rid of the challenging. I'm trying to keep the challenging bits." - Phillip Dawson
“I imagine when people are hearing repeatable talks... they're like, Oh, this guy's bloody lazy... But it's much more like that old metaphor of the grandfather's axe, right?"“ - Chris Pahlow. "It's the talk of Theseus or something... all of the pieces in it have been changed over time, that's for sure." - Phillip Dawson
9. Customise Smart, Not Hard
Keep the majority of your content the same, and tailor to different audiences/forums through minor adjustments — change examples, add relevant terminology, adjust titles and abstracts. Spend 30 minutes on customization, not hours.
"Usually... I am changing a few words throughout so that it gives the appearance that whatever the host's specific area of request is that I am attending to that... if you were to ask an AI to summarise the content of both of them, the summary would be like 99 percent the same." - Phillip Dawson
10. Prepare for Technical Issues
Expect things to go wrong with the technical setup and always have backup plans for demos.
Invest in quality basics like a good microphone for online presentations.
"If you do live demos of something, record a video of your live demo and have screenshots for when the video doesn't work and absolutely don't rely on sound." - Phillip Dawson
"This microphone costs a fraction of what I'd get paid for a talk. And there are, I know people who are highly paid speakers... who will not buy a microphone like this. And it blows my mind." - Phillip Dawson
11. Ask some key questions before agreeing to a panel
Ask crucial questions upfront: gender breakdown, time requirements, slide expectations, and whether time limits will be enforced. Communicate these questions to all speakers for transparency.
"What's the gender breakdown of the panel? You don't want to end up on a man-el... Do you want us to have slides? And how long do you want us to speak for?... Are you going to be firm with the requirements of time for speakers or is this just a loose guidance?" - Phillip Dawson
12. Learn to Say No, Nicely (With Alternatives)
Be transparent about your capacity and offer clear alternatives rather than burning out on custom talks.
"I could develop something custom for you, but it takes a lot of time... However, if that's too much, I'm happy to give one of those two talks for this sort of price... I'll happily give the talk for free if you open it up to people from across the sector and you get at least a hundred people who aren't from your institution." - Phillip Dawson
Credits:
Host & Producer: Chris Pahlow
Edited by: Laura Carolina Corrigan
Music by: La Boucle and Blue Steel, courtesy of Epidemic Sound
- Public engagement
- Career development
- Storytelling
- Team alignment
- Strategic comms
- Stakeholder/audience mapping
- Making your work relatable
- Talks and presentations
- Communicating in different formats/mediums
- Your pitch
- Community engagement
- Strategy
- Mentorship
- Collaborating with professional staff
- Knowledge mobilisation
- Interdisciplinary collaboration
- Feedback
- Listening
- Playfulness
- Representing your discipline
