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Hard disagree. Always provide me maximum information. If there is a chance I can pre-consume some of the content, I am more likely to better follow what the spe

Hard disagree. Always provide me maximum information. If there is a chance I can pre-consume some of the content, I am more likely to better follow what the speaker is presenting and learn more than if everything is fresh. Audience can choose to not do the pre-reading (most will not), but for those who want it, allows for deeper appreciation of the talk.

jghn 4y ago
It depends on the context. For example, with business meetings slides tend to be jam packed with information. They're already a glorified document with a narrator. The speaker is there to enhance the slides. It works well to hand those out ahead of time. For a proper presentation, like at a conference, IMO slides should be there to supplement the speaker. Not the other way around. Thus the amount of hard information on the slides themselves should be minimal. Because of this, hand outs don't make as much sense. And of course a third angle. If one follows my philosophy for conference talks & such, then there's the problem that distributing slides after the fact are useless, because all the important information was conveyed by the speaker. But that's another discussion altogether.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  By sheer number, the majority of presentations are of the business-disseminate information type, so that's my default angle. Unless there is some big reveal that requires secrecy, it costs nothing to pre-share slides, so I wish it were more common.
  - jghn 4y ago
    Agree 100%. It's just important for everyone to keep in mind when discussing slides, presentations, etc that there's not a one size fits all answer to this stuff. Someone talking about the "perfect slide deck" needs to understand they only mean perfect for the specific context they have in mind.
deleted 4y ago
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Arainach 4y ago
A presentation isn't a spec review or a technical paper. If your goal is maximum distribution of technical information, you should be looking for another format. Presentations convey the essence of a story. If it requires a bunch of graphs that people should be actually reading, make it a document, not a slideshow

jghn 4y ago

It depends on the context. For example, with business meetings slides tend to be jam packed with information. They're already a glorified document with a narrator. The speaker is there to enhance the slides. It works well to hand those out ahead of time. For a proper presentation, like at a conference, IMO slides should be there to supplement the speaker. Not the other way around. Thus the amount of hard information on the slides themselves should be minimal. Because of this, hand outs don't make as much sense. And of course a third angle. If one follows my philosophy for conference talks & such, then there's the problem that distributing slides after the fact are useless, because all the important information was conveyed by the speaker. But that's another discussion altogether.

fbdab103 4y ago
By sheer number, the majority of presentations are of the business-disseminate information type, so that's my default angle. Unless there is some big reveal that requires secrecy, it costs nothing to pre-share slides, so I wish it were more common.
- jghn 4y ago
  Agree 100%. It's just important for everyone to keep in mind when discussing slides, presentations, etc that there's not a one size fits all answer to this stuff. Someone talking about the "perfect slide deck" needs to understand they only mean perfect for the specific context they have in mind.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Arainach 4y ago

A presentation isn't a spec review or a technical paper. If your goal is maximum distribution of technical information, you should be looking for another format. Presentations convey the essence of a story. If it requires a bunch of graphs that people should be actually reading, make it a document, not a slideshow