So you want to present at BENTO 🍱? Below is important information to keep in mind when crafting your presentation.

What is BENTO 🍱?

BENTO 🍱 is about how ideas come together while also breaking the mold in crazy ways. We are holding BENTO 🍱 because we know that people like you have interesting domain knowledge that should be shared with Purdue students. BENTO 🍱 is a night where presenters will give quick 5-10 minute presentations on a topic of their choosing, sharing their excitement for whatever they can’t keep off their mind. If you have a topic you’d like to present, let us know!

Content & Pacing

Your presentation should be around 5-10 minutes. Ensure each slide has a reason to be in your deck or each word has a place in your speech. You will be time-limited to 15 minutes, so ensure your presentation doesn’t exceed this time.

One of the few requirements we have is your presentation must end with a bento box, similar to Apple’s bento boxes. Below is an example:

We do not expect you to be as strictly structured as Apple’s designs; feel free to break the mold in terms of items coming out of their boxes, using interesting color palettes, and other fun twists on the format.

Tips for Keeping Your Audience Engaged

• Be succinct! Don’t ramble on parts of your topic that are not relevant to the overall idea. Try not to spend more than a minute on any given slide.
• Mind your mind. Assume your audience has no or very surface-level knowledge of your topic. Using technical terms without sufficient introduction is a surefire way to lose your audience’s attention.
• Keep yourself important. Don’t offload your audience to a slide filled with text. Keep slides to one or two sentences (at most!) and say what you would’ve put there. The audience didn’t come to BENTO 🍱 to read a slideshow, they came to hear you yap about your passion!
• Images images images! In line with the previous point, make liberal use of images and diagrams in your slides. They give something for the audience’s eyes to focus on while their ears listen to you.

Audience Interaction

While audience interaction is allowed, we discourage it because:

• Audience input is hard to manage and usually chaotic (unless it’s a simple show-of-hands-style thing)
• Time waiting for your audience is less time to talk about your topic!

If you believe audience interaction is important, we’ll work with you to ensure it will be a good experience for everyone involved.

Questions

We encourage allowing the audience to ask questions at the end, but question time is a part of your 15 minute time limit.