I have a similar rule, but my metric isn't slides but words: for a 20 minutes talk, I try keep the word count in my slide deck under 100 words. More generally,

I have a similar rule, but my metric isn't slides but words: for a 20 minutes talk, I try keep the word count in my slide deck under 100 words. More generally, I strongly believe that slides are only here as an illustration of what I say, they shouldn't be that useful without me talking in front of them. As an example, here is a slide deck I used for a talk I gave at the MIT a few months back: http://vimeo.com/24471964 http://vimeo.com/24471964