In the game of presenting, it is always preferable to choose horses for courses. Even before you start preparing your slides, you need to know your audience to be as effective as you can be; you need to put yourself in the audience's shoes—so that you can weave the fibers of connection, which is the entire essence of presentation. The chance of you appealing to the audience is much greater if you have analyzed your audience and prepared the presentation accordingly, don't you think? Imagine bringing up the topic of how Microsoft got the idea of GUI in a conference attended by Microsoft employees! You wouldn't exactly be connecting with the audience, instead repelling them from you.

My point being that audience analysis is absolutely necessary, important, and mandatory before you start preparing for presentations. It renders your time being used in the most effective manner as you relate the topics of the presentation and the style of...