"How does what I'm hearing relate to the title of the presentation?"
I thought this recently when I was attending a talk for which, going into, I was genuinely excited about. However, about halfway through the talk I was struggling to understand how the things I was hearing related to the title of the talk. Don't get me wrong, the talk was still very good and informative; but, I was disappointed that the buzzwords in the title of the talk did not occupy much space in the information that was actually presented. This got me thinking about certain things that I like and dislike about presentations. To serve my own selfish interests (or should it be self-interests?), here are those things...
1. Know your audience and tailor your data/content accordingly (e.g., tell engaging stories with families, talk about feasibility with practitioners, convey costs/resources to administrators, bring rigorous data for scientists)
2. Take time to make smart visuals (i.e., can be quickly interpreted with minimal explanation) so that text is secondary to the things you say and the images you display
3. Avoid buzzwords... but if you use them, then please make space in your presentation to explain the relationship between (a) what you are presenting and (b) those buzzwords (i.e, don't make your audience do the heavy lifting)
4. If you are a big name, then bring big stuff (e.g., do not present data from an article that you published years ago)... and if you don't have big stuff, then stick with a poster
5. Be genuine and passionate... if you need an example of what this looks like, then please try and see Dr. Brenda Jones Harden present (she is my new academic crush... sorry Dr. Carol Trivette)