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100%. One of the things I'm drilling into my team (we do a lot of slides!), is you have to decide - are you making slides for: 1. presentation - should be spar

100%. One of the things I'm drilling into my team (we do a lot of slides!), is you have to decide - are you making slides for: 1. presentation - should be sparse, key, anchoring data that enables people to ground themselves while they listen and pay attention to YOU or 2. Reference - dashboard and background and details and density If a deck may be used for both purposes, intentionally or not (e.g. we expect it to be shared and referred to by people not attending), resist the urge to do a hybrid slide, and if at all possible make presentation slides at front, reference/supplementary slides at back. Worst situation is when somebody uses what are effectively reference slides for a live presentation. People's attention is split between reading and making sense of dense information on screen, and the key important points you are trying to verbalize.

zeruch 5y ago
"resist the urge to do a hybrid slide, and if at all possible make presentation slides at front, reference/supplementary slides at back." This has been my SOP for years, but its amazing how resistant some folks are to it (like $NUMBER_OF_SLIDES is the sole measure of quality...with "more slides are bad, mmmkay" being the default). I fought with my last boss on this endlessly, as I would rather have many slides with small digestible chunks of info that I could scaffold my presentations through at a brisk clip, and they preferred as few slides as possible, with dense text and charts, that they would elaborate on in long exposition. I always got better positive feedback, to no avail. My decks would be 'edited' into a compacted slop-fest. Drove me batty.
potatolicious 5y ago
One effective way of juggling the two types of slides I've found is to stick the reference slides into an appendix that isn't part of the actual presentation - but can be quickly pulled up during ensuing discussions, and for the benefit of people reviewing the slides later. High-level stats during the actual presentation, meaty details available upon request.

zeruch 5y ago

"resist the urge to do a hybrid slide, and if at all possible make presentation slides at front, reference/supplementary slides at back." This has been my SOP for years, but its amazing how resistant some folks are to it (like $NUMBER_OF_SLIDES is the sole measure of quality...with "more slides are bad, mmmkay" being the default). I fought with my last boss on this endlessly, as I would rather have many slides with small digestible chunks of info that I could scaffold my presentations through at a brisk clip, and they preferred as few slides as possible, with dense text and charts, that they would elaborate on in long exposition. I always got better positive feedback, to no avail. My decks would be 'edited' into a compacted slop-fest. Drove me batty.

potatolicious 5y ago

One effective way of juggling the two types of slides I've found is to stick the reference slides into an appendix that isn't part of the actual presentation - but can be quickly pulled up during ensuing discussions, and for the benefit of people reviewing the slides later. High-level stats during the actual presentation, meaty details available upon request.