Conference Presentation Schema

I just returned from a scientific conference. It was one for the chemists in the company I work for but I noted it was similar to other conferences I’ve been to. I’ve been fascinated over the years as I sit through more presentations. I’ve began to notice, as we all do, that presentations given at conferences appear to break down into certain categories. I suspect similar categorizations are available somewhere else on the internet already. But that won’t stop me from posting my own

Classification Scheme for Science Conference Presentations

Slogsentation: A presentation delivered relatively slowly, without any discernible inflection, near monotone, few breaks, very little in the way of organization, and almost always delivered just at the edge of the microphone’s ability to pick up the sound

Umsentation: A presentation with a density of “um” of >5 ums/20 actual words

Hypersentation: A presentation delivered at maximum speed. Accompanied by 1millisecond/slide

Hyposentation: A promise of actual information which immediately goes very deep into the topic without providing anything like background. Thereby rendering it to be of interest to only 3 people on the entire planet, only one of which is in the room at the time, that being the presenter.

Neutron Presentation: Maximum words on a slide coupled with Hypersentation

Recursive Presentation: Three slides forward, one slide back. Repeat.

Acrosentation: A presentation dominated by acronyms which are never spelled out.

Masturbsentation: Given near the end of the conference showing pictures of a small clique having fun or being “silly” earlier at the conference as if everyone knows the people in the pictures and that these are really fun and wacky people. This is the way to recognize the “really important and interesting people”, as opposed to the people you hung out with.

Bait & Switch: Title indicates technological information will be presented but this is dispensed with in about 2 slides followed by 40+ slides of marketing analysis.