It's no coincidence that I'm writing this just as I got back from a 3-day conference. I enjoy going to conferences because there's always interesting people to meet and to talk about common research interests. However, there are painful moments and most of them revolve around… boring presentations.

I don't hold the secret to do the perfect presentation and that's exactly why this post is not called "What to do in a presentation". Instead it focuses on what NOT to do. And I mainly address this from the point of view of the person that is watching because, well, that's what it matters: to make a presentation that the people attending won't find boring.

So, here's the list of no-no's (in no particular order of "boringness"):

• No excessive text - Presentations are to be "presented". Not "read", otherwise they would be called "readentations" or "book-clubs". The text on the slides should be concise and bullet-like, with no details. The details will be provided by you, while presenting, hence the name "presentation".
• No dead-slow animations - I saw a presentation in which a certain slide took almost one minute to fully load. You could feel the viewers' stress building up in the room as the circles and arrows would come up. It's even worse when the speaker isn't actually saying anything during that time.
• No slide reading - Do not, under no circumstances, read the full text of your slide. Again… that's not a presentation, that's reading. And assuming that your audience is literate, you're not doing anything extra to help people understand your presentation. And no, waving like a maniac while reading it won't help… at all! Neither reading it with an attitude or in a Shakespearian way.
• No huummmms - If you open your mouth and say "huuummm!" between every two words, people will end up thinking that you have no idea what you're talking about.
• No clouds - Using clouds to obfuscate details of a system is soooo 2001! A little detail is always useful to offer the necessary insight into your system…but not too much.
• No note reading - Prepare your presentation and don't spend the whole time reading a script, especially if you're with your head buried in papers and not facing the audience.
• No dinosaur talk - Focus on the subject of your presentation and don't wander about trying to explain everything starting in the jurassic era.
• No excessive laser pointing - The laser pointer is quite useful for explaining complex diagrams from afar, but don't use it all the time and especially not as if you're in a rave party after taking LSD.
• No clipart - Nothing says "lame" like an abstract picture of a well-dressed man smiling and talking on the phone in front of a computer to depict the "User" of your system.
• No intimidation - Don't babble for hours about a very complex issue with vocabulary that is only known by a dozen people around the world and then finish with expressions like "Trivial!" or "Obvious!"

If you have any other tips to share, please do so. Feel free to use this knowledge to prepare your next presentation. Your audience will thank you.