I've seen your style and it's fine! I just came from a lecture by Professor Richard Wiseman (http://www.richardwiseman.com) who you'll find examples from on YouTube - a very funny guy who gets across fascinating information on psychology and the paranormal using stories, tricks etc. I was thinking while watching him that his style is quite similar to mine - breaking up potentially boring talks with examples, audience participation etc.

In July I presented a paper at a cultural studies conference in London and sat through two days of people reading literally from their papers, rushing to get it all in, and using Powerpoint slides with tonnes of bullet points. I couldn't understand a word but I got caught up in the idea that my presentation, on the Saturday, would not be taken seriously because I had animation, pictures and no script. So I spent Friday night writing my entire presentation down so I could read it out because that's what everyone else was doing.

In the end I bottled and went with my original plan - and it worked. People were interested, paid attention, asked questions, followed things up later...

Now I put this down to two factors. I never went to university, but studied via distance learning, with key lectures delivered as radio and TV programmes. As a child I was also entranced by the annual Royal Institution lectures on TV every Christmas (a series of interconnected lectures on a scientific topic like quantum physics, plate tectonics, astronomy etc, all aimed at children but delivered by eminent professors using models, experiments, and audience members participating) and by the TV programmes of Johnny Ball, a children's TV presenter who any Brits of a certain age will know. He presented two series called Think of a Number (about maths) and Think Again (about lots of things) and taught me more than I ever learned in school.

Using these as a model, and unencumbered by what I might have witnessed as an undergrad or by following a traditional academic career, I think I've developed a presentation style that says 'a presentation/lecture is about telling a story, I have to make it interesting, I can leave the minutae, the facts and figures, for handouts and PDFs or for a reading list. My job is to make you interested enough that you leave asking questions and following them up. It's not to tell you everything you need to know so you leave never wanting to know anything else'.

So use your own style - it's why people might hire you (content's important too, mind...)

I remember a research paper I read about - can't recall the reference, sorry - in which a lecturer did a tour of US colleges presenting the same talk but in an 'interesting' way. Student retention of facts was tested afterwards and found to be equally as high among the students who weren't studying the subject as among those who were, and overall far higher than for a more traditional lecture.

The difference was the 'interesting' lecturer was actually an actor with no specialist knowledge. The point being that style of delivery is key to engagement. Specialist knowledge is important for follow-up questions, tutorials, seminars etc, so no one's suggesting replacing lecturers with actors(!) but it's surely preferable to develop experts' delivery skills.