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Meredith Ringel Morris

we liked:
self-contained mini talk that gets a lot of information across
after watching Merrie's 40 second presentation, attendees clearly know what this project is about.

uses photos to support speech
these photos give a good idea of the user experience and complement Merrie's verbal presentation (unlike text-heavy slides and bullet lists that tend to distract attendees from what is said).

calm presentation
It is true, CHI madness can get frantic. But it does not have to. One slide, a calm self-contained presentation make 40 seconds seem like plenty of time.

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Steve Benford

we liked:
good use of video
no slide deck, no bullet points, just a single video clip that tells a brief self-contained story.

wonderful teaser
who would not want to know how the story ends...

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we liked:
self-referential presentation
Steve embeds a demo of their approach into the way he presents (watch the video)

Wendy March

we liked:
builds on one interesting finding
Wendy could have tried to make a list of findings from her study. Instead she picks a single interesting fact, which allows her to get people interested. (Why is Wendy's tagline interesting? Read the abstract of that's interesting)

no images for a non-visual topic
Some topics are inherently visual and thus it is easy to summarize them in a photo. Not so Wendy's paper. She could have added generic imagery, but that might have distracted from the topic.