Research presentations are a staple activity for academic professionals. Each year, academics travel all over the world to attend academic conferences. They share in-progress and finished research, gather ideas about potential research ideas, and network with other academics. Over the course of a conference, many presentations will be given in various categories and conference themes. Some presentations inspire audiences and others disappoint them. This paper identifies what academic conference attendees in the Information Systems (IS) field consider to be attributes of successful and unsuccessful academic presentations. Based on a mixed-method survey of 65 IS professors, this paper addresses IS scholars’ motivations for attending conferences, their preparation for and anxiety in creating and delivering presentations, and their expectations for academic presentations. Results are compared between the two major attendee types: networkers and focused attendees. Recommendations are provided for academic conference presenters.