I'm fairly comfortable with presentations and know the usual rules about not reading off the slides, not having walls of text on the slides, etc. Usually my presentations are very visual with minimal text and I like to keep the focus on me instead of the slides, this allows me to control timing. I also almost always bring props (PCBs, protoypes, etc) related to what I'm presenting on.
With all that said, I've never defended at the PhD level before so I'd love to get some pointers from you all on what I can do to go that extra mile and make the defense great.
A good format might be to present a 5 minute segment to provide an overview of what you have worked on. Then the remainder should focus on reinforcing the contributions that your dissertation also presents. Departing too far from your dissertation might raise more questions which you will then need to defuse during the interrogation.
Obviously if your contribution includes something that can be further evidenced by a suitable short video segment, then that will be valuable. For example, if you have developed some algorithm which leads to faster, smoother, etc operations under some adverse condition, then demonstrating it in addition to explaining the theory behind it is of value.
BTW, most of us only ever have to defend one PhD.
Use illusionist / marketing survey tricks other than that of the defense committe kind.
pre-seed audience with relevent topic area questions/titles before defense of the 'poor phd student' kind while
being mindful of thesis defense committe bounds.
Practice with audience outside field with people in field observing. If can make sense in reasonable amount of time for non-field audience AND person(s) within field -- good to go.
For taking the ego down a notch -- explain/give talk to middle schoolers/high schoolers. If they're hooked & makes sense to in-field observer, very good chance good to go.