Well, for me it grew quite naturally from previous seminars I gave about the subject of my thesis. I worked on my PhD for the better part of four years, and in the meanwhile I gave at least half a dozen talks about it, from progress reports before the academic committee to official presentation of results at various workshops and conferences. So it was actually quite easy for me to put the final presentation together.
My few advices would be to break down the outline of your thesis into parts (something like: scientific context, purpose of the work, data sample, procedures and operations, results, rebuttals, conclusions, future works), and then break them in even smaller parts. Be aware that people will usually pay more attention to the starting and final parts, so don't bore them with details about the data or the procedures. Do not crowd your slides with too many information.
And repeat the presentation over and over. And then another time. You have to know it by heart, because usually during the actual presentation your head will be too busy freaking out to think about it.
Well, the slides are done, I was actually told to cut back on them and get out of the weeds. The big day is this Thursday. I'm just going for my MS in Engineering Management. I want to say thanks for the advice. I've been doing the presentation in front of my family, and they just kind of stare. I hope the committee is more interested.
One thing going for me is that I wrote the thesis on a project I've been working and thinking about since '06. It also happens that nobody has done this before so we are designing the program from the bottom-up as we go. The committee is pretty cool, they have all been in industry, so I can relate to them. I am in my 50s so I don't get rattled all that easy. I figure one degree about every 25 years is about right.
I say I am not going for any more formal schooling, but I am looking forward to ROV training in Scotland later this year.
