What information should the speaker transmit during the title slide of a conference presentation?

I've heard the following advice: When the people in the audience see somebody they don't know, they'll be asking themselves "What kind of guy is this?" for at least some minutes. I guess anybody does this, mainly subconscious. This implies that it is harder to convey technical information in the first minutes, since people work subconsciously to find out who you are and what they should think of you.

So when I start my presentation I always have at least three sentences that are not technical. This can be "Thanks to the chair for the (nice, warm) introduction.", "Thanks to the organizers (I prefer to give names here) for having me here (at this nice place/great session).", "My name is... and I will speak about... (collaboration with...)...". There could also be a sentence about the meeting in general or one that relates the talk to previous ones at the conference.

This may cost you one or two minutes which you loose for your precious technical content, but I think it's worth it if at least a few people in the audience don't know you already. If you don't spend these few sentences, the chance is higher that you'll loose these people from the very beginning. Anyway, conferences are (in my understanding) as much about people as they are about research. If I go home from a conference and didn't have had nice conversations and met a few new people, it wasn't a good meeting.

My introduction words are:

Hello, I am < My Name >. I am going to present our current research on < Paper Name >. Before I start, I must remember to thank my coauthors < Coauthor names >; and also acknowledge the support of < Funding Org Names >

If the chair has already said my name, and the paper title, then I would be skipping the first sentence.

The slide should support this, and unlike all other slides in the presentation, conveys more information than what I say. For example I don't say my university name, because the logo conveys it better.

• My Name (Bolded on slide)
• Coauther Names
• Paper title
• Funding Org Names/Logos
• University Names/Logos

I think you can skip date and conference name because your audience presumable knows when and where they are.

Unless you are obliged otherwise, this can be the only place you show the university and funding org logos/names. Which lets your slides be much more clean and minimal.

Side note: Never do an 'Table of contents' overview slide, unless you are doing something over an hour long. Something more like an 'abstract' is better, if your title alone doesn't convey enough.

What are you doing and why would you spend months of your life doing it.

• If you are studying microorganisms found in the Baltic sea: why is the Baltic special? Why are the microorganisms interesting? What kind of information, in very broad terms, can they tell you?
• If you introduce a new algorithm to process some data: what was the problem with the previous ones?

And so on. I have attended many talks where I get a fair idea of what they are doing, but I am none the wiser on why would that even be a thing. And I am sure they have their good reasons, but they are probably only evident to an expert in their work, not the general audience.

In short: you have between one and two minutes to convince the audience that your talk is worth listening to and why.