Guidelines for speakers at the Utrecht mathematics colloquium:
Dear speaker,
with this short text, we would like to inform you about the goal and structure of the staff colloquium. We appreciate your cooperation. Our guidelines are broadly in line with John McCarthy’s recommendations on “How to give a good colloquium talk”.
Your talk will take 60 minutes (from 15:30 to 16:30) or, upon request, two times 45 minutes. In both cases we would like to emphasize that your presentations should be understandable by a general mathematical audience. Please do not overestimate the knowledge of this audience. In case of doubt, we feel that it is better to be too basic rather than too advanced. As a consequence, it is probably not feasible to present mathematical details on your latest research results. However, discussing their global meaning and consequences can be very valuable, and giving some historical perspective of your topic and explaining why it is of interest to you and your community can be an excellent start.