2. The presenter doesn’t understand what he/she is doing. Believe it or not, once you get deep into a subject, it’s actually far easier to stay in the jargon world then it is to come back down to the real world where earthlings reside and explain the concepts for people outside of your esoteric community. And if you can't explain what you're doing for people outside your community, then you don't really understand what you're doing.
3. The presenter sucks at presenting. This is separate from the material being crap. This point has to do with the presenter’s inability to present. This may manifest as an inaudible voice. Alternatively (or additionally) you may notice it in the terribly prepared slides with tons and tons of text. Another red flag is when you see an overly complicated slide with too much information, or information that’s thrown at you all at once instead of piece by piece.
4. The presenter doesn’t have enough time to present the material the right way. This is a pretty popular reason. Think about this. As a PhD student, you’ve spent 3+ years of your life on a research topic. You are now trying to distill all of it (for job talks) or some of it (for conferences) to anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. Not. Possible. If an hour to 90 minutes is given, somehow magically, that seems to be enough time.
5. You haven’t eaten. When you’re hella hungry, you can’t think straight. No matter how elementary the material, if your stomach is screaming at you, you’ll probably fail to understand what’s being presented.
6. You’ve just eaten. And by eaten, I mean stuffed yourself. Stuffing yourself full of yummy food is the best way to lull yourself to sleep at something that’s as typically dry as a tech talk.
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