I have a few simple tips for giving good presentations. The golden rule being: anything you talk about should be on the slide, and everything on the slide must be talked about.
I commonly see this golden rule violated, especially when one is trying to show that they did a lot of work, rather than show that their work has value, which can occur in all places, but certainly in academia too, where accomplishments may be necessarily rare, thus other proxies become more important.
For example, introduction sections often like to show some picture with a lot of things going on. Generally I think this is done to make it appear that one's work has lots of applicability to one or more fields, and thus is undoubtedly valuable. However, specificity is more important when it comes to value. To put it another way, if you create some technology that is second best to a hundred different technologies in a hundred different applications, it is entirely useless. Without a specific case where some new technology is the best, there is no reason for it to be adopted. Now, to be fair, academic research occurs at a stage where application may not be entirely known or clear, and that should be made readily explicit.
This brings me to another tangent. This observation comes from my advisor during my PhD. He noticed, and perhaps he was joking, idk, that the best, or in some ways the most honest, information about a project could be found by asking a student at a poster session, ideally one who was "unaware", or perhaps "not media trained". The idea being that in papers and presentations, and the like, there will hardly ever be honest criticisms or well thought out limitations given to ones work. Moreover, the greater the achilles heel of a project, the less likely it will be mentioned in any public setting. More likely, some minor drawbacks might be given as areas for future work, and none will be the wiser.
Now, that I'm older and more... realistic, this comes as no surprise to me. When I was younger and more... idealistic, I really thought academic research, especially in a biomedical setting, would be a big happy family working together to solve the most important problems. But, at the end of the day, people need to get paid, and not everyone cares about impacting the world. Of course, this is extremely cynical and jaded, but I think it is more accurate than innacurate, so despite it making me sound like a terrible person, I do want to say what I think, and hope that I am wrong and the world is merciful.
The point being, why is it that the most accurate account of the pros and cons of a project, the difficulties overcome, the limitations, the future of the work, why is all of this information limited to in-person, off-the-record conversations at conferences? And why does the highest form of these tend to come from the least invested person, that is, students that are too "naive" or "unaware" to know, or perhaps care, that they should never surrender any admittance of any weakness in their work?