Build an academic presentation (with PDF and formulas)

Academic talks differ from business talks in two key ways: quotes must be precise and math must render correctly. VizChat's PDF widget pins the source PDF on the canvas so you can jump to any page; rich-text widgets render LaTeX natively ($...$ inline, $$...$$ block), which is perfect for Methods and proof walkthroughs.

Scenario

You're presenting a fresh ICML paper at your lab's reading group. Expected deliverables:

• A 15-minute Storyboard walkthrough (with a TTS rehearsal pass)
• The full source PDF pinned on the canvas so you can jump during Q&A
• Key equations from Methods typeset in LaTeX — no blurry screenshots

Step-by-step

1. Create a Workspace and upload paper.pdf into the file tree. The PDF enters the doc library for Agent citations.

2. Ask for a summary: "Parse paper.pdf and split it into Background / Method / Experiment / Conclusion — 150 words each, English."

3. Scaffold the canvas: follow up with "From the four sections above, generate 4 rich-text widgets on the canvas arranged horizontally."

4. Embed the source PDF: insert a PDF widget pointing at paper.pdf. Hover the widget and click the expand button in its header, or select it and press Enter, to open the enlarged view; the right-side property panel exposes Current Page (0-based) under Navigation for jumping to a specific page.

5. Typeset equations: inside the Methods widget, write LaTeX directly:

   Core objective:
   
   $$
   \mathcal{L}(\theta) = \mathbb{E}_{x \sim p_{\text{data}}} \big[ \|f_\theta(x) - y\|^2 \big] + \lambda \Omega(\theta)
   $$

   Save — the formula renders live. Inline math uses $\alpha \in [0,1]$.

6. Experiment chart: ask the Agent "From Table 2, extract accuracy for the 3 methods and plot a bar chart." You get a bar chart widget.

7. Storyboard the talk: compose the slides in the storyboard outline (Create mode), one slide per section, write a speaker script per slide (first-person, conversational).

8. TTS rehearsal: pick a narration persona in the storyboard panel and preview end-to-end (equations are highlighted but not read aloud).

9. Live mode: on the projector, press F for fullscreen, ←/→ to advance line-by-line. If an audience member pushes back, press Esc to leave fullscreen, then zoom the pdf-viewer to the exact page.

Tips

• Precise quoting: when you say "as described on page 5", set the pdf-viewer's Current Page to 4 (0-based — page 5) and place it on the corresponding slide — saves seconds of fumbling.
• Formula not rendering? Confirm the widget is a Rich Text widget and that there's a blank line above and below the block.

Next step

• Research notes guide
• Supported file formats