Nobody likes to give a boring presentation but no one else endures it more than a person in academia. There is the saying that 'fake it till you make it'. This is stretched very far by some of the speakers in academia, to such an extend that they end up exposing themselves. Never underestimate your audience because whatever you throw will get ricochet back. With my limited experience, here I provide a few points which might help you come out of 'powerpoint afflictions'.
1. Flaunting your awards, Academy fellowships and focusing on the awards before the beginning of presentation.
We will not be judged by your prior awards or achievements. Our talk and our ideas in the particular presentation will decide that.
[The person who is flaunting his previous achievements rather than his ideas wants you to have a unflinching belief in them. They don't want to win your mind by their ides but by their achievements. Always pour questions after their talk and you might enjoy their confused answers]
2. Flaunting memory with exact time and dates of events, sometimes trivial details.
Richard Feynman was taunted as a child by one of his friends that he does not even knew the name of a particular bird. His father told him later that even if you know the name of the particular bird in all of the languages, you will practically know nothing about what the bird exactly does. So, it's essential not to give evidence to your audience about your rot learning.
3. The speaker uses few syllables and often repeats it. Unabated use of "basically" "I mean" "forget that part"
[When the going gets tough insert "forget that part". Exposing yourself in such a way gives audience a leverage point and for some it might not be an easy part to forget. The moment you say "forget that part" its etched even more in the memory of the audience. The overuse of this phrase might give an impression to the audience that you have ill prepared for the talk or you undermine the intelligence of the audience.
4. Giving same presentation by simply changing the title slide with absolute disregard of the audience.
[The presentation should be tailored for a given audience. We should not start to oversimplify the ideas and concepts our audience is already aware of. A talk on 'philosophy and science' must discuss philosophy more in science department. If in the same talk, one begins to provide 'timeline of scientific discoveries', the audience is bound to be baffled]
5. Cluttering the presentation with figures, abbreviations and graphs.
[It's simply done to give the audience an image of a pathbreaking work, sometimes illusionary. If in audience you focus on one specific figure of a slide, you are bound to have doubts. Its improbable that you will get a satisfactory answer for that peculiar doubt. In that case learn never to clutter your presentation.]
6. Oversimplification of an Idea. Know your audience.Structure the talk.
7. Acknowledging senior professors again again for some kind of magical blessings.
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