Of course, my main advice would have to be, “Go to your session on the correct day.” But I offer some other suggestion as well.

Before I get to my own suggestions, please allow me to commend Kevin Wilson’s. I agree with every point. Also, I should add that I’m not innocent in any of these matters; I’ve probably made every single mistake described in Kevin’s post, in Duane’s (see below), and in my own.

Present your research; don’t read your paper. I am preaching to myself here, as in the past I have been all too guilty of reading rather than presenting. Consult Duane for more on this point.

Get to the point. I have an abbreviation that I sometimes write in the margin of my notes: “DBD” or “death by data.” If you have a lot of data, put it on a handout and summarize it. As it happens, I am sitting right now through a speech where the speaker is overloading us with data—and unnecessary data. [Note: I typed this paragraph during an SBL session—shame on me for multitasking?—but didn't post this blog entry until after Thanksgiving.] The speaker gave us a handout, then proceeded to basically go through every example on the handout. The speaker’s data supports his point quite well, but really, most of the speech was unnecessary. This could have been an 8-minute presentation instead of a 25-minute one.

Don’t forget the warrants. Anybody but me remember the Toulmin model? One paper I heard at SBL this year stands out as a particularly bad example of giving only 2/3 of an argument. The author read a paper that gave a whole bunch of data, then jumped to a claim without giving warrant for that claim. In other words, the reader didn’t show how the data actually support the conclusion drawn; instead, the author just skipped that step. We could have done with a lot less data and a lot more warrant in that particular presentation.

If you’re going to use presentation software, make your slides meaningful. Don’t use presentation software to project a mere outline of your speech. If you put a lot of text on your slide and you’re moving so fast that your audience can’t copy down the text, you’re cramming too much onto your slides. But your slides shouldn’t have a lot of text on them anyway. Use your presentation software to enhance your speech. It’s not reverse-teleprompter software.

If you’re going to use a handout, bring enough copies. Spend a few extra dollars and bring too many copies. Having leftover handouts costs you a little bit of money. Running short of handouts cost you the audience’s attention.

Use caution when citing yourself. Sometimes it’s useful, when your paper is part of a larger trajectory of research, to mention that. But please think carefully about whether doing so really advances the argument you’re making now, or whether it’s just a bit of self-promotion. Not that I’m against—or above—shameless self-promotion. But when I’m listening to a conference paper, what I’m interested in is your argument, not your CV. Pharses like “as I have argued elsewhere” or “as I wrote in a paper two years ago” usually add nothing except a few words to your presentation. Just go ahead and assert your claim. If somebody calls you on it in Q&A, then you can make the bibliographical reference to your earlier work. By the way, this applies to written work as well. It’s fine to footnote yourself, of course—indeed, you must, to avoid plagiarizing yourself, and it’s also a useful way to avoid redundancy in making the same argument again and again. But the footnote does the job by itself, so you don’t need to bulk up the main text with “as I have argued” phrases.

Strive for a strong ending that is obviously an ending. If you have to say “Thank you” to let us know you’re finished, try reworking the final paragraph. It won’t always work, I admit, but do your best.

During Q&A, don’t bother to affirm that a question is “good” or “interesting.” Professors should work on this in their classrooms as well. Just answer the question instead of commenting on the question.

And finally, one bit of advice for conference attendees:

Don’t hijack the session. No matter how smart you are, or how famous, or how right, we come to the session to hear the presenters, not the audience. I can only speak for myself, of course, but my opinion of a scholar is diminished if that scholar seems to feel a compulsion to ask a question or—worse—make an extended comment after every single paper.